Boring Company Approved To Build Futuristic Garage That Would Connect To Underground Commuter Tunnel (mercurynews.com)

On Tuesday night, the Hawthorne City Council gave Elon Musk's Boring Company the green light to build a prototype for a new garage that would connect passenger cars to the entrepreneur's envisioned underground hyperloop. The Mercury News reports: Musk's Boring Company recently bought a private residence abutting the one-mile underground tunnel it already built beneath 120th Street between Hawthorne Boulevard and Prairie Avenue near SpaceX. The garage at the residence would connect to the tunnel. But as part of its approval, the company agreed not to open the test elevator to the public or to have cars move in and out of the garage from the street. Cars would enter the tunnel from the SpaceX campus, move through the tunnel and on to the garage and then back to SpaceX, so the test process would not create additional traffic on the street. The company wants to show that it can utilize an elevator and short tunnel spur for developing a high-speed underground public transportation system. It plans to rent the house as well.

As sketched out in public documents, a car would drive onto a "skate" that connects to a hyperloop track, such as the ones being developed by two private companies and recently featured in the collegiate Hyperloop Competition at SpaceX. The company also on Tuesday earned approval for a separate short spur from its existing tunnel in order to remove a boring machine that it first intended to leave in the ground. Originally, the company planned to bore a two-mile length of tunnel, but as company representative Jane Labanowski explained to the City Council, they identified an opportunity to remove its expensive cutter head. So, it now plans to reduce the tunnel length to just one mile and extricate it from another piece of property the company recently purchased.

Comments

Sounds Familiar

[Mister Transistor]

Isn't this the plot of Better Call Saul?

FP?

"It plans to rent the house as well."

[Anonymous Coward]

so that's how this whole thing is getting funded......

Re:"It plans to rent the house as well."

[Rei]

I so want to see the craigslist ad for this one ;)

Hawthorne

[mentil]

For those who don't live in the region, Hawthorne City is in the SW of Los Angeles County, California. Neither the summary nor article bother pointing out where the heck Hawthorne is.

Re:Hawthorne

[rossdee]

We assumed it was in CA otherwise Musk would have to dig a very long tunnel to connect it to his Hype R Loop

Passenger cars in a hyperloop tunnel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I'm confused. The Slashdot summary says, "connect passenger cars to the ... underground hyperloop.". And the Mercury News web page shows a drawing of the proposal, and the drawing shows a regular passenger car in the tunnel. But what would a passenger car do in a hyperloop tunnel?

The Mercury News web page has a link labeled "proposal for a public transport system to Dodger Stadium". It is a link to this video. In the video, the "car" that goes from the street level to the hyperloop tunnel is a hyperloop car. This hyperloop car is owned by the hyperloop company, and it carries about 15 passengers. The car goes from the street level, down to the level of the hyperloop tunnel, and then it starts traveling through the tunnel.

That second video makes sense to me. It's a way to get passengers into a hyperloop car. This proposed method is in contrast to how most people get onto a regular train, which is by standing on a platform, and waiting for the train to stop at the platform.

Re:Passenger cars in a hyperloop tunnel?

[Rei]

This has nothing to do with Hyperloop. Hyperloop is a longer-term objective. This is about Loop. That said, both Loop and Hyperloop are - regardless of what the Dugout Loop prototype will do - designed for hauling both cars and passenger capsules. The whole point of all of the work they're doing right now is prototyping and testing. Even Dugout loop is just a larger-scale test.

Re:Passenger cars in a hyperloop tunnel?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QFPdGiD8EE

Re:Passenger cars in a hyperloop tunnel?

[Rei]

OMG, a car caught fire - quick, get breathless overcoverage of it! Wait, you already did? Good!

There's one car fire in the US for every 20 million miles driven and one fatality per 85 million miles.

Teslas have been driven 9 billion miles. This should correspond to 450 fires and 106 deaths.

Where are they?

Concerning fires, here's a list of Tesla fires between 1 January 2013 and 11 March 2018, which is the vast majority of Tesla miles. The total count? 14. Vs. an expected 450.

Concerning fatalities, three months ago an anti-Tesla Twitter account added up the number of deaths in Teslas and arrived at 34. Note that many of these occurred in other countries like China that have a much higher road fatality rate than the US. It's still a third of the expected number for US-only driving of that many miles.

Let's look at the newest Teslas, shall we - the Model 3? So far there have been no fatalities and no reports of fires in customer cars (there was one Model 3 found up for scrap that had been gutted by fire, but it was "Location: Fremont" with 1 mile on the odometer, so clearly something that happened at the factory. Also, the fire damage was heaviest on the bumper, where it had melted the alumium - but hadn't managed to do so over the pack itself. So it's not clear that a battery fire was actually involved). But how many miles have been driven for this rate of "0/1 fires and 0 deaths"?

Lacking specific numbers, the best we can do is estimate. The average driver drives around 12k miles per year. Owners of new cars put significantly more miles on them during their first year, and particularly first few months because - obviously - it's a new car that they bought because they wanted to drive it. Bloomberg says there were around 25k made in the past month (0-1m ago), 19k in the previous month (1-2m ago), then 13,5k (2-3m ago), then 9k (3-4m ago), the 9k (4-5m ago), then 6,5k (5-6m ago), and 9k earlier than that. So around 19k*(30k/12)*0,5 + 13,5k*(30k/12)*1,5 + 9k*(26k/12)*2,5 + 9k*(23k/12)*3,5 + 6,5k*(21k/12)*4,5 + 9k*(18k/12)*6 = ~315M miles. Meaning if they were gasoline cars we should expect 16 fires and 3 1/2 deaths. Where are they?

Re:Passenger cars in a hyperloop tunnel?

[Rei]

I mean, I assume you're equally diligent about reporting fires in gasoline cars, right? I totally remember your coverage of, say, the million BMWs that were recalled in 2017 due to over 40 parked cars - not cars involved in accidents, but parked cars - spontaneously bursting into flames, right? That's just up to 2017. And they keep getting more fires and keep issuing more recalls this year. The BMW fires have been particularly prolific in South Korea, where 11 burst into flames in July alone.

Want something more recent? Just seven days ago, Ford recalled two million trucks due to fire risks. GM's last major fire-related recall was a couple years, their *third attempt* to fix a problem that was causing cars - often ones that were parked - to burst into flames. Also seven days ago a million Priuses were recalled due to a fire risk in the wiring harness. Need I keep going? Remember here that we're not talking about fires in these cars from crashes - we're talking only the subset of fires that occur during normal use. Fires in gasoline cars during crashes are effectively a problem flagged "WONTFIX" by the NHTSA.

Re:Passenger cars in a hyperloop tunnel?

[jellomizer]

It would be impractical to have a hyper-loop station in every town, we would still need car to drive to the town without a hyper loop.

You park your car into the Hyperloop Car. Turn the engine off (if fossil fuel based) and sit back and wait for you to get to your destination. Drive out and continue to your last mile.

I would be happy if we had a normal rail system, where I could park my car on a trains flatbed, and just ride it to my destination, even if it was slower then actual driving, but I can use my time, resting, reading and not worrying about how to get to the next 10 miles away from my stop. Renting a car, getting a Taxi hiring an Uber.

Re:Passenger cars in a hyperloop tunnel?

[Anonymous Coward]

US autos are driven 3.22 trillion miles a year. Saying that Tesla is so much safer than regular automobiles is like saying you took the car for a ride Tuesday of last year and didn't have an accident, so all driving is accident-free.

Re:Passenger cars in a hyperloop tunnel?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to have a train carry my car like a ferry.

Besides the reasons you mentioned, what if you have a lot of stuff to carry with you? You don't want to manually carry the stuff from your car into the train, then into an Uber. It would be easier to keep the stuff in your car, and have the train carry your car to a station near your destination, and then drive your car the last few miles.

more imaginary bullshit that will never get finish

[Anonymous Coward]

gib monies and subsidiz plz!

Mexican tunnels

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe there is a large market for tunnels under a controversial wall.

Iced?

[harvey the nerd]

Sounds like great plan for the next Ice Age.

Re: actually

[Rei]

You FUDsters are hilarious. Musk goes on Joe Rogan, demonstrates little knowledge about pot (including being apparently unaware of the existence of blunts, asking whether it's a joint or a cigar, and after having it explained to him, responding, "so it's like posh pot, tobacco pot?"), studies it like a curious scientist examining an alien species for the first time, takes one non-inhaled puff, shrugs his shoulders (**everyone screenshots here), shakes his head no, gives it back, and later talks about how he doesn't like marijuana because it hinders his ability to accomplish things that make a difference in the world.

In FUD world, this translates to "Boring's CEO may be too busy hitting the rock and/or getting stoned"

I'll repeat: you FUDsters are hilarious ;) Meanwhile, Musk got 11 million people (in under a week) to watch a 2 1/2 hour interview with him which has gotten over 72 thousand comments on Youtube, with by far most reactions to Musk being positive. As an example, at the time of writing this post, here's the newest comments in the thread that concern Musk:

"The way elon scans his brain after every question freaks me out but it's kinda badass"

"I love this man. He's not a typical high roller business man that's for sure. We need more Elon Musks in the world. "I love humanity, I think it's great.""

"Why does it seem like Elon Musk has already seen the end? He must be visiting us from an unknown realm and couldn't help but feel sorry for us."

"Elon seem mildly autistic"

"Damn, this guy is really a genius."

"This will be a tough one to beat. This one was by far my favorite Joe Rogan interview and likely my favorite interview I’ve ever watched. I’ve given Joe jazz in the past, but we’re all human, and I can’t deny the great job Joe does giving us Internet consumers one hell of a platform into so many fascinating minds - including Joe’s. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Elon. This was truly great. We’re living in a amazing time in history. Love IS the answer. It starts with oneself."

"So i just rewatched Iron Man recently... And Elon Musk is basically our real life Tony Stark. I love that guy."

I'll also add that while I'm personally not a fan of intoxicating substances of any stripes, I find it rather silly that nobody seems to care about the fact that they're drinking whiskey during the interview. Which is more of a "debilitating" substance. One non-inhaled puff on a blunt? "OMG!" Drinking whiskey? "Meh...."

This is how the Lizard People take over

[Anonymous Coward]

A network of subterranian tunnels connecting everyones home

Re:This is how the Lizard People take over

[Sique]

But lizards are poikilotherms, meaning that they become slow if not in the Sun. What sense does it make for them to dig tunnels which create an advantage for homeotherms like the humans?

Re: This is how the Lizard People take over

[chill]

You forgot to account for the ongoing hybridization project.

Re:This is how the Lizard People take over

[Anonymous Coward]

But lizards are poikilotherms, meaning that they become slow if not in the Sun. What sense does it make for them to dig tunnels which create an advantage for homeotherms like the humans?

The sun warms lizards, but if they're in nice constantly warm tunnels then they don't need the sun.

Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[Rei]

Here's to hoping that we soon get more info about their surface connections. Because they've talked almost nothing about them and to me it seems like the hardest part. Loop, in their ultimate design goal, fundamentally requires large numbers of these surface stations (in contrast to subways that use a smaller number of large terminals), so you have to be able to build them quickly and cheaply. You obviously can't make them with a TBM, it's not just going to make a sharp right-angle turn and drive vertically to the surface. And while the main tunnel can be as deep as you want in order to avoid city infrastructure, every single one of the surface stations has to penetrate every layer below it en route to the Loop tunnels.

I really want to see what their approach is to be able to rapidly make the vertical tunnel segments while quickly detecting and avoiding or rerouting any unmarked underground hazards or infrastructure. Their ease of getting permits en masse will depend on how well they can demonstrate causing minimal disruption to everyday life. To me, this sounds like the hardest part of the whole Loop goal.

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[RhettLivingston]

In addition, these surface tunnels can't just drop straight into the main loops. To be able to carry any real volume in the main loops, you can't have acceleration occurring on the loop. If you accelerate on the loop, you have to maintain a ridiculous gap between vehicles to allow for a car or carrier to enter the loop and accelerate before being rear ended. The throughput would suck.

The solution is to have lots of acceleration and deceleration tunnels that merge with the loop and some automated management of the merging process. Given that tunnels are planned to be cheap, this is likely the intended solution.

So a connection involves an elevator to get through the crud closest to the surface using the shortest route (straight down cuts through much less crud than ramping down) connecting to a ramp that leaves the loop, passes a bunch of elevators, and rejoins the loop.

Extra points to anyone who can design an off ramp that splits off in such as way as to make it impossible for any vehicle to ever hit the divider because that is the only point in the system where a head on collision with a wall could happen.

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[RhettLivingston]

I think this is one of the reasons that a lot of the entrances have been envisioned as being from garages or parking lots. There is a lot less running under those locations than under the streets. Keep them deep and the tunnels can use the right of ways of the streets, but the downshafts will be going down to the sides of all of that mess.

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[Rei]

Indeed - "feeder tunnels" and onramps/offramps are an explicit part of their plan. That's a relatively straightforward part - just more boring, at depth. It's the vertical access shafts that they've not talked much about, and which seem to be the trickiest part. So here's to hoping for more info about their approach here.

Re: Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[Anonymous Coward]

Elan, you are trying waaaay too hard to get the slash dot nerds excited. We are not going to solve your monumental engineering problems for you. Your biggest single problem that dwarfs all others is.... you! Either get off Twitter, slashdot and YouTube and stop making a spectacle of yourself and stay focused on actually accomplishing something for the first time in your life or step down and let professionals who know what they fuck they are doing run these companies.

Tesla stood a good chance until you bought and fucked it up. SpaceX might be valuable some day. Boring Company is moronic. Flamethrowers are childish and typical of your narcissistic bullshit. Just stop. For your own sake, (since you do not care at all about your investors), just stop.

Elan, take a long vacation, get out of the public spotlight, then focus on business and not your ego.

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[Kiuas]

It's the vertical access shafts that they've not talked much about, and which seem to be the trickiest part. So here's to hoping for more info about their approach here.

Yup agreed. The elevators will be the part of the system that gets congested most easily and I've yet to see any info as to how they're planning to avoid having long lines of cars waiting to be taken up/down on the entrance/exit points while also keeping the costs reasonable.

This is where the whole project stands or falls. It doesn't matter how well the tunnel infrastructure below is set up if accessing said infrastructure and getting away from there involves a ton of waiting. The placement of the elevator access-points on the surface is also a bit of a question mark: how do they plan to place these things such that the cars waiting to get in and getting out of these will not cause problems for the surface traffic?

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[TFlan91]

Extra points to anyone who can design an off ramp that splits off in such as way as to make it impossible for any vehicle to ever hit the divider because that is the only point in the system where a head on collision with a wall could happen.

Aren't these things mag-lev rails? Construct a magnetic field flush with the divider making an apparent seamless wall.

Tech probably isn't there, but this would probably be one of the only routes to meet that goal. It would have to be fast enough to turn on/off in a moments notice for each passing train/car/whatever.

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[Rei]

The plan is to have them be so numerous that there are rarely ever "lines" of more than one car - simultaneously also enabling much of a direct-to-the-destination mode of travel. Which again, is why it rises and falls on how well they can accomplish this loading step. If an elevator takes 1 minute per loading, which (between cars and passenger capsules) averages 3 passengers, then the maximum daily passengers from that terminal is 4320. So for it to be the only means of transportation for a city of 1 million people with an average of four trips per person per day you'd need 925 terminals. Increase that figure (significantly) for the fact that you can't expect it to always be at 100% usage *and* not generate lines. Decrease for the fact that nobody would expect that to be a city's only means of trasportation. On the balance I'd think that a city of 1 million would need at least 3000 terminals, preferably more like 5000 terminals, if you want to avoid lines.

Actually... that's not nearly as bad as I was expecting.

So let's see... 1 million people, that's the size of San Jose. Which has 177,5 square miles / 467,55 square kilometers. Which if they were spaced evenly on a grid would be 303 meters / 995 feet apart (obviously, in practice, spacing would be proportional to density, not even). So actually I'd think you'd want well more terminals than that just to reduce walking distance, if you want to service passengers without cars to/from everywhere in the city. Maybe 10x as many terminals (50000)? Then the average terminal would be running at a capacity factor of 1,85% if all traffic was done via the Loop system (and less in practice, since there would still exist other forms of transport)

So no, I don't think lines are any meaningful threat, assuming the terminal layout is properly done. At least based on these back-of-a-napkin calculations.

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[mlyle]

Assuming uniform loading for capacity factors is erroneous. People take more trips at 8AM than at 3AM or 2PM. Adding more station density out at the edges of San Jose doesn't help capacity in the downtown at rush, too.

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[alvinrod]

If an elevator takes 1 minute per loading, which (between cars and passenger capsules) averages 3 passengers, then the maximum daily passengers from that terminal is 4320.

It's far worse than that, because there are big spikes in traffic at certain times of the day and other times where there's almost no one on the road and no traffic that would cause a person to use this service unless it's overall less expensive. However, it doesn't need to be able to hold the entirety of all traffic, just enough to reduce congestion on the main roadways where everything is jammed up. Also, there's nothing that says you have to design a system that can only load a single vehicle at a time. It may be more economical to make a bigger elevator that loads multiple vehicles at a time, which is what you'd want to do if there are certain times where you'll always be able to fill up that elevator. The really slick design would be an elevator system that can handle a single vehicle for the times when traffic is light, but also has a mode to handle five or more during peak use times.

I think that there are some other problems in your calculations as well. I wouldn't be surprised to find that over 80% of traffic is trying to go to less than 20% of the city, so you can't just plop down terminals evenly as most would not handle enough traffic to be able to justify the cost of building them. There's also the issue that because of this, all we're really doing is pushing the bottleneck closer to the end points. However some of this can be solved by attaching your entry/exit points to large parking garages. At least that keeps traffic from spilling out onto the streets, but it's still an issue when a lot of people all get off work at around the same time and need to queue up in the garage. Fortunately that's exactly the kind of place that would not mind acting as a giant terminal.

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[Rei]

925 assumes both uniform loading patterns and that Loop is the only means of transit in the city. 3-5k is my estimate for accounting for both of these factors.

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[Rei]

because there are big spikes in traffic at certain times of the day ... However, it doesn't need to be able to hold the entirety of all traffic

You mean like where I wrote "Increase that figure (significantly) for the fact that you can't expect it to always be at 100% usage *and* not generate lines. Decrease for the fact that nobody would expect that to be a city's only means of trasportation. On the balance I'd think that a city of 1 million would need at least 3000 terminals, preferably more like 5000 terminals, if you want to avoid lines."

I increased the number of terminals by a factor of more than five due to accounting for both of those factors combined (the former increasing the number of terminals needed, the latter decreasing it). But it turns out that that's not the constraint; the constraint is how far apart they are, since you don't want people to have to walk on average a third of a kilometer (more in less densely populated areas).

I wouldn't be surprised to find that over 80% of traffic is trying to go to less than 20% of the city

You mean like where I wrote "(obviously, in practice, spacing would be proportional to density, not even)"?

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[Rei]

Loop is not maglev; it's wheels or rails. Some technologies using the "Hyperloop" name are maglev, but the original Hyperloop proposal is air bearing-based.

Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect

[mlyle]

Really IMO population isn't the place to start. Figure out how many people need to get into a commute target in how much time. Then figure out if the station density for that place is practical.

Probably the worst thing is the asymmetry in station loading--- you need lots of relatively low-use stations to minimize walking distance, but you need lots more stations than that in the densest areas to deal with queue lengths during peak demand (and they will tend to only be full in one direction at a time).

And so Elon Musk

[maroberts]

..completes his transformation from hero to villain by having a secret underground lair

Re:And so Elon Musk

[Rei]

Indeed. It was only a matter of time. I look forward to the upcoming Musk startups, Giant Lasers Incorporated and Sharks Unlimited.
 

Re:And so Elon Musk

[110010001000]

You sure love that guy. Hero worship is fascinating.

Re:And so Elon Musk

[sconeu]

You forgot the fingerquotes around "Lasers"

Re:And so Elon Musk

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Surely he got the idea from his side gig as the Green Hornet.

Re: actually

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you been there? Most of the work Elon Musk does is engineering, like 80% of the work he does.

> This celebrity bullshit everything has to end, it is a lie, a great big fat, psychopathic egoistic lie.

Good luck with that. We need role models. It can even be observed in toddlers. It is never going to end. Certainly not within our lifetime, and not for the next 1000 years either. Now get with the program and be a better role model instead.

>Be careful who you call a real like Tony Stark, a make believe characters with a really good public relations team, that believes themselves above the law and above government, in real life, those fuckers belong in prison.

This again. Prison? Why? What criminal law did he break this time?

Re: actually

[Daralantan]

You forgot the part where everyone is also claiming the Air Force revoked all his clearance and shut Space X down.

See kids

[Anonymous Coward]

... this is what happens when you smoke too much pot

Re: actually

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I am a bit concerned on just how fucking stupid people are on this planet who are just like you. It is a telling sign what is wrong with this country.

How 'bout that hyperloop

[guruevi]

By now we should've had a fully working 100 mile prototype, all we have is a 1/10 scale model that runs a few hundred feet and takes hours and hours to start.

I think Elon is 'quietly' retiring the failed enterprise.

Re:How 'bout that hyperloop

[mentil]

A competition held a couple months ago used a 1-mile test track in a 6-foot-diameter tube. It's expected to be half the diameter required for the real thing, but it was evacuated of air so it's not too far off from the production tube characteristics. The maglev aspect is only starting to get traction (ha!), with a 75-foot test track; speeds should pick up once maglev is incorporated, compared to the most-publicized test vehicles which use wheels.

Re:How 'bout that hyperloop

[andydread]

Whatever happened to the compressor/air-suspension concept rather than the mag-lev concept? To me if it's mag-lev then it's not real Hyperloop.

Re:How 'bout that hyperloop

[guruevi]

Half the diameter = 1/4th the volume required. That is, you either need to pump out a volume 4 times as long or as fast (which took 45 minutes with the biggest vacuum pumps commercially available).

Maglev has been figured out, go to Japan, get a train and some track and bring it back.

Re:How 'bout that hyperloop

[Newander]

Air-suspension doesn't really make sense in an evacuated tube. They're trying to eliminate the air, not use it to lift the pods.

Re:How 'bout that hyperloop

[Ksevio]

If you're building 100 miles, it's not so much a prototype. They have plans to build one in Chicago to the airport and a smaller one in LA to the Dodger's Stadium.

Re:How 'bout that hyperloop

[guruevi]

Plans, yes, but they haven't even fully built out a one mile test track 1/4 the volume of their final product.

The hyperloop idea isn't new or hard. We've figured out Maglev, we've figured out vacuums, the test tube should've been a one-year project.

Re: actually

[Anonymous Coward]

Space EX hasn’t had a single air force launch or new contract since that incident.

Sorry I'd rather have an Exciting company do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Boring companies are lame. Give me an exciting company instead. I need to be entertained, yo.

Exciting news!

[Anonymous Coward]

From a boring company...

Re: actually

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, getting a bit paranoid there REI.

Another key financial officer has bailed. Nobody wants to be the financial officer at Tesla when the ship sinks.

Re: actually

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately we do not generally make multi billion dollar business decisions based on the collective consensus of starry eyed 15 year old YouTube users. Why would you post such drivel?

As far as did he inhale or not: he shows bad judgement doing the interview at all and was infinitely stupid to get into a drug chat and then actually take in hand and bring it to his face. There is no justification or excuse for such sheer idiocy.

As an aside, Elan/Rei, I am glad you decided to ignore your board and lawyers and double down on your public shenanigans. I take pleasure in watching reality catch up to an unaccomplished incompetent no talent in such a public way. You could have easily avoided all these self inflicted harms but your narcissism makes you do it. This amuses me greatly. Please continue.

Re: actually

[Rei]

What, they haven't landed an air force contract in the past week? Heavens to betsy!

Laughing Stock

[RedEars]

Maybe it's because I'm approaching "get off my lawn, kids" age, but isn't this whole concept of a loop tunnel infrastructure simply a fantasy of those living inside the Silicon Valley bubble? Seems like a solution looking for a problem, a huge suck of public funding for the benefit of very few people who'll use it. Crazy idea: improve, update and modernize the mass transit options available now.

Re:Laughing Stock

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they should add more subway tunnels. ;)

Re: actually

[dbialac]

I'm starting to get the idea that he's preparing to start living in a hollowed out volcano from where he can launch rockets. Has he acquired a white cat yet?

Re:Waiting for thunderf00t

[Kiuas]

Thunderf00t has done a great job debunking all of Teslas terrible ideas, and he has already started on the Boring company and how terrible their plans are.

Thunderf00t has not actually criticized Tesla itself. He's done a lot of videos in the absurdity of the Hyperloop as a non-viable thing due to the enginerring (and cost) problems for example here, here (a video where he actually traveled to the Hyperloop test-site to showcase the sub-par engineering work done with the track (it's already rusted through for example)) and here (a video he made in response to the backlash to the previous video). And he also did an video earlier this year about this tunnel stuff and its problems here as well as a video on the absurdity of Musk's idea of using rockets to travel 'Earth to Earth' here.

Musk's thing is that he has a lot of ideas as well as the capital to try and test some of them. Sometimes they're successful, sometimes they're not, but thanks to Tesla and SpaceX the man is now treated in the media as if he is Midas and everything coming from him must be 'the way of the future', but that's not really the case. Personally I don't expect the Hyperloop to become a reality ever just due to the cost-factors involved, that is, it's not that with enough money you couldn't potentially build a Hyperloop that worked,. but that building and securely maintaining one would likely be so costly that it'd make no sense, and the same problems are faced by this tunnel idea. With Musk the question is not primarily whether it's it's possible technically, it's whether or not it's economically feasible as a solution.

Another step towards Caves of Steel

[cascadingstylesheet]

Another step towards Caves of Steel ... fine with me.

Nature is overrated. (And it tries to bite you too much.)

Re: actually

[Anonymous Coward]

I watched the Joe Rogan / Elon Musk episode. All the "hype" and nonsense about the interview was not true at all.

My takeaway is Musk is a very odd guy, and I do not mean that in a good way.

My perception of him took a nosedive after watching that.

Re: actually

[jellomizer]

The problem is we seem to not be able to separate someones ability to do a job, with their inability to to do something that isn't their job.
A CEO isn't a Model Citizen, or even a good spokes person. Their the Chief Executive Officer, So their job is to make the big decisions, and drive the company in a/on particular direction(s).

A good CEO will put the company in a good direction where there is growth and influence. An effective CEO will keep the company on tract in a direction (good or bad). A Bad CEO will cause chaos in the organization and have the company just fiddle in whatever stuff they seem they want to do. Sometimes this works, but most of the time it will just lead to failure.

Re:Waiting for thunderf00t

[110010001000]

You don't need to "test" Hyperloop to know it is a stupid idea to implement. Common sense will tell you that. Hyperloop is a concept that goes back to the 1800s, it isn't new. The reason it was never implemented is because people weren't stupid enough to put money in it. But today there are people will excess money and egos that will fund anything. In addition, public money is put into these boondoggles and people like Musk hope to get more of that as well.

Re:Waiting for thunderf00t

[Anonymous Coward]

>Musk's thing is that he has a lot of ideas as well as the capital to try and test some of them.

Isn't that the thing, though? He doesn't use his own money, he uses YOURS.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html

Unfortunately, nobody will see this because the fanboys mod anything anti-Musk to -1, but seriously, he is spending YOUR money on his crazy and generally FAILED ideas. Stop letting him do this. Make him spend his own money and watch the bad ideas disappear.

Magic trick

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a tunnel. It's not a hyperloop. It's a distraction. All Musks companies are on the edge of collapse due to mounting liabilities. Boring is desperate to recover their drill rig now. Tunnel was done. Sunk cost. They need cash.

Re: actually

[Anonymous Coward]

Here here!

OSHA violation of the day

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, these tunnels are blatant violations of all tunnel safety regulations: They don't comply with railroad tunnel safety requirements, highway tunnel safety requirements, or even the most lax of mine safety requirements. Tunnels must be designed so that people can get out of them safely in the case of a fire. The Muskian tunnels aren't. They're not tall enough to walk out of without suffocating. There's a reason that subway tunnels are expensive, and blowing off safety rules isn't "innovative", it's corrupt as all fuck.

Re:OSHA violation of the day

[Areyoukiddingme]

Of course, these tunnels are blatant violations of all tunnel safety regulations: They don't comply with railroad tunnel safety requirements, highway tunnel safety requirements, or even the most lax of mine safety requirements.

There are no Federal train tunnel safety requirements whatsoever. The Federal Railroad Administration "determined that regulating bridge or tunnel structural conditions or requiring inspections would not be cost-effective to FRA when considering the cost of implementation and enforcement."[Page 22] What little Federal oversight of railroad bridges and tunnels exists happens only as part of track inspection, and there is no Federal standard to which those inspectors work.[Page 23]

There are no Federal highway tunnel safety requirements either. The only thing that exists are preliminary recommendations from the NTSB and a committee to conduct research about the possibility of issuing guidelines from a group of state departments of transportation representatives, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials T-20 Tunnels committee. Neither of those existed before the ceiling collapse in the I-90 connector tunnel in Boston in 2006.

What voluntary, industry association guidelines exist are intended to deal with designs where internal combustion engines are allowed to operate inside them and, in the case of highways, where every vehicle uses its own independent steering to navigate the tunnel. Neither is the case in a Boring Company tunnel. Boring Company tunnels are effectively subway tunnels. The New York City subway system tunnels are just 18 feet high at the center, less at the edges. Boring Company tunnels are 14 feet high. You're telling me that 4 foot difference is the difference between life and death? I call bullshit. Whether or not you can walk out of a 14 foot tunnel in the event of a fire depends entirely on the ventilation system and fire safety systems in the tunnel. There is no public information whatsoever about what those systems may be in Boring Company tunnels, so no conclusion is possible at this time.

Stop blathering about things you know nothing about.

Re:OSHA violation of the day

[Anonymous Coward]

Cough

Also in the news

[Opportunist]

Funny company going to provide all the balloons for the big opening.

Sweet, a parking garage. Almost there!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Oh so they've solved all the hard problems and can go on to the easy stuff. Cool!
Like how to keep such a hyperloop evacuated over hundreds of miles with connections and evacuation routes, and implosive recompression not ramming into the train like another much larger and more violent train.

Re:Sweet, a parking garage. Almost there!

[iggymanz]

A garage that doesn't exist for transport technology that doesn't exist. I'm going to have pilotless drone taxis bring people to the hyperloop, don't invest in that garage invest with me! bitcoins accepted, just make sure it's $1000 or more in bitcoin!

Re: actually

[Anonymous Coward]

Eauuu!

You have some of Elon's musk all over your face.

That's nasty man. Gross!

Re: /. moderators have lost their sense of humor

[Anonymous Coward]

Went to bed expecting this to be +5 funny by the end of the day.
It's -1 now. WTF?

/. moderators have lost their sense of humor.

Re: actually

[Applehu Akbar]

My takeaway is Musk is a very odd guy, and I do not mean that in a good way.

When you accomplish what Elon Musk has already accomplished, you can be as odd as you want.

nice tax dodge

[Anonymous Coward]

buy private property. know that in no reasonable time frame will it be rezoned for commercial use, but get hangers on to believe it will be. tell everyone the place is a business expense, then later when attention wanes, let the supermodel xanax tweets flow!

Or, use it as a personal garage for yourself and "select" friends, who "contribute" a lot of money to you or causes you support, but its not political because its a service they're paying for! but since its still zoned residential, claim its got nothing to do with business! win-win at both stories even when mutually exclusive.

car in a vacuum?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you drive your regular car onto a "skate" and enter the Hyperloop, which is in vacuum? Dunno about you, but my car sure ain't airtight, so I'm going to suffocate. Of course, it's always possible I'll be hit by a Hyperloop train doing 1000mph (or whatever) before I suffocate.

Either way, this doesn't sound like a good idea.

Re: actually

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. You really love musk or something. Maybe you should marry him

Re: actually

[Mkkby]

This boring company stuff is beyond nonsense. Pick the most expensive way to do commuting. Pick the least flexible when commuter needs change. You got it -- tunnels.

I thought self driving was gonna revolutionize commuting. There is NO NEED for this worthless company, except to promote Musk and his *genius*.

Re: /. moderators have lost their sense of humor

[Mister Transistor]

Yeah, I've noticed that too. I expected at least 1 funny mod, instead I only got a -1 Cowardly Pussy Mod (overrated).

FUCK this place, I'm done trying and contributing here. Fucking pearls before swine.

Blow Me. I'm outta here.

Re: actually

[drsquare]

Elon Musk is not an engineer, he has no engineering education or qualifications. He is not spending 80% of his time engineering, and if he is he should be fired because if he's doing that who's doing the job of CEO?