Next Big Thing From Elon Musk? It Could Be 'Boring' (usatoday.com) 184
A string of tweets put out by serial tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Saturday hints that his entrepreneurial future may be a little "boring." USA Today reports: The Tesla and SpaceX founder got on Twitter on Saturday morning to rant about an issue he seems to find irksome -- traffic. Musk has also been working on resolving his frustration with traffic issues through above-ground means with his Hyperloop venture, which proposes a plan for mass-transit pods moving through above-ground tubes. But that doesn't appear to be enough, commenting: "Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging..." He even offered up a name for the venture, calling it "The Boring Company," and began branding it with a slogan: "Boring, it's what we do." Then capped it off by tweeting, "I am actually going to do this."
Tubes or Tunnels? (Score:5, Funny)
Or both.....
Poor guy. What he really needs is a helicopter.
Its a solved problem (Score:3, Insightful)
They're called Metro systems. There's even one in LA though he may not know that since he probably hasn't been on public transport since he was in his mothers womb. Amazingly they travel through tunnels underground and bypass road traffic! Who knew?
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They're called Metro systems./quote>
Elon Musk does not take mass transit. That's for the common folk.
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The Enlightened city dwelling elites.
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LA's metro is rubbish, and traffic is very much not a "solved problem" in LA. The low density of sprawl combined with the metro being laid out as a star with no cross links means it's usually faster just to sit in traffic. Here in Pasadena the metro regularly blocks traffic because, in contrast to what you assert, it is most certainly not all underground. Metro is also not a solved problem for a city as low density as LA, as how do you maintain coverage while keep down travel time and still get enough rider
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Tunneling systems might be ready for a shake-up. TBMs are slow... maybe there is a better way.
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The LA Metro already reaches as far as San Bernardino, approximately a million miles from City Hall, but only the line from Union Station through Hollywood is underground. Underground construction is expensive, especially in a city that is riddled with faults and petroleum pockets. A portion of the Santa Monica line now under construction is being built through tar.
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Do you have any links to how they are accomplishing tunneling through tar? Do they just treat it like an underwater tunnel?
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Enjoy!
https://tarnmoor.com/2016/12/1... [tarnmoor.com]
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It's true that when the traffic reaches a certain density, the only way forward is to put in mass transit, and in the largest cities this has to be a subway. But currently, there is a culture of drivers and a parallel culture of transit riders, even in cities with a fairly good transit system.
What Silicon Valley can help with is integrating the new generation of Uber/Lyft services with mass transit into one app that uses a transit link to get through the most crowded parts of a city and ridesharing to handl
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It doesn't have to be a subway, plenty of roads in LA they could put tracks on.
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He's a traitor! He wants to end reliance on fossil fuels. In Tumpmerica, he will be arrested, charged with crimes against coal, and thrown in prison!
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As are yours delicate little Trumpite snowflake.
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"Yeah, because large cities that have extensive public transit systems (Like Chicago, New York, and LA) totally donâ(TM)t have horrendous traffic problems."
Err yeah, that traffic is despite the metro/subway, not because of it. What do you think the traffic in manhatten would be like if everyone had to drive to work there? Idiot.
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A boring machine is just a beefed-up helicopter with the rotor moved to the front.
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Then there's the glide ratio being roughly the same as a set of car keys... and auto-rotation is not so much gliding as it is praying a clutch will save you.
I like how Global Security described helicopter pilots: "They know if something bad has not happened it is about to."
And the best quote was right near the top of the page, "Helicopters don't fly -- they beat the air into submission."
http://www.globals [globalsecurity.org]
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Wouldn't 'Boring' need to come up w/ regular environmental impact statements? If everybody bored their way below the earth, entire cities would cave in
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It might be useful if coupled with self-driving cars, where the tunnels are only for the SDCs. Couple this with underground parking, automated charging stations, and even service garages, and this could be quite useful. Especially for cities like Austin where there are residential towers going up with zero added parking, so having the ability for vehicles to be parked underground will be quite useful, especially with the fact that there is no hope of light rail, much less a viable subway system ever happe
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Except that the reason most residential towers don't build parking if they can get away with it is that underground parking garages are expensive, even if you just need to dig a hole in the ground to build them in. Building them underneath existing stuff is not going to be feasible most places.
He'll need to go deep. (Score:4, Insightful)
Otherwise he'll get run into massive amounts of cost and delays due to existing underground infrastructure - of which some old elements may not be marked accurately (or even at all) on any map.
I can only guess that he feels he has some alternative design for a tunnel boring machine that could be cheaper than today's designs and more tolerant to problematic geology. A thought that may or may not be accurate.
Re:He'll need to go deep. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's suffering from Shockley/Chomsky syndrome. A smart person that thinks they are smart about things they have no training, knowledge or ability in.
Comes from having their asses kissed too much (sustained by being surrounded by echo chambers, hence Shockley went away, but Chomsky keeps on blathering).
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He's suffering from Shockley/Chomsky syndrome. A smart person that thinks they are smart about things they have no training, knowledge or ability in.
Comes from having their asses kissed too much (sustained by being surrounded by echo chambers, hence Shockley went away, but Chomsky keeps on blathering).
Yeah, like a guy who built an online payment system thinking that qualifies him to start a solar energy company, or a high-performance electric car company, or even something really crazy like a rocket company.
I get what you're saying, but Musk has a rather exceptional track record of achieving his aims.
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There are lots of high hopes for these ventures already, but so far Musk hasn't gone beyond LEO or sold a car cheaper than $100k. The solar energy company, he acquired.
Musk is really brilliant but I think he gets bored too quickly. Finish what you started, you must.
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There are lots of high hopes for these ventures already, but so far Musk hasn't gone beyond LEO or sold a car cheaper than $100k
Actually the Model S starts at well under $100K, and I'm sure plenty of them have been sold for less than that.
I get your point, though.
Musk is really brilliant but I think he gets bored too quickly. Finish what you started, you must.
If you're the one doing all of it, sure. If you can hire lots of brilliant and energetic people and they're moving forward well, you can expand.
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Move the goal posts much?
Musk created a successful online payment system. He created a company that builds high performance electric cars, and appears to be an industry leader in that market; who cares how much they cost? He created a rocket company that seems to be doing well, winning contracts for deliveries to ISS and creating (one of?) the first reusable first stage rockets; IIRC SpaceX launches are also much cheaper than anyone else's.
Musk has started companies that have been successful innovators in
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People with lots of capital can make big splashes. I can't help but note that the success of Tesla is far from assured, much less SpaceX.
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Smart humans have lots of potential. But the world is full of endeavours that require a full human effort to master. These people then sometimes make it 'look easy', but it isn't.
Thinking 'I'm good at X, therefore I can set the world of Y on fire' is the definition of arrogance. Sometimes it's true, when the world of Y is fossilized, but when Y is already moving forward rapidly (like tunnel boring technology)? Tunnel boring is not currently a capital deprived industry. Even with electric cars, Musk just
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I submit that one of Elon's prime assets is his social capital -- i.e. Elon says that X could be a thing, and as a result of his saying so, enough talented/knowledgeable people get excited about it that it (sometimes) actually becomes a thing, because they then go ahead and implement it (regardless of whether Elon himself ever had the ability to implement it on his own).
Frankly, our society could use more of that. There are too many naysayers, and not enough people willing to take a risk and try something
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I wouldn't call tunnel boring "moving forward rapidly". /duck
Re:He'll need to go deep. (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess who is on Trump's 'advisory' team? Guess what Trump wants to spend trillions of dollars on? (Infrastructure in case you missed the twit.)
Digging big holes is infrastructure. He doesn't have to have much more than a bunch of animated You Tube videos to scarf a few billion dollars before everybody finds out that there isn't any money to do all that.
Smart guy. Always ahead of the curve.
Besides, tunneling deep underground is going to be easier than getting to Mars and just might be a good idea in a couple of years.
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so your argument is that he is brilliant at soaking up government subsidies ?
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See SpaceX and NASA. Spot on.
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Besides, tunneling deep underground is going to be easier than getting to Mars and just might be a good idea in a couple of years.
Perhaps his goal is to be able to tunnel deep underground ON Mars in a couple of years?
Re:He'll need to go deep & fast (Score:2)
In terms of depth, that's what I thought - how deep do you have to tunnel to make sure you don't hit anything man-made? I'm also thinking of geo-thermal heating/cooling piping that can do down a couple of hundred feet.
Regardless of how deep, it will also have to be fast. I believe current borers (correct term?) drill at the rate of 1-2 metres per day. To be fair, a big part of what they do is mould concrete and rebar into a completed tunnel which is a big, complicated job, but for anything else to come a
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Regardless of how deep, it will also have to be fast. I believe current borers (correct term?) drill at the rate of 1-2 metres per day.
According to Crossrail [crossrail.co.uk], the largest distance tunnelled by one of their boring machines in a single day was "72 metres by Ellie on 16 April 2014 between Pudding Mill Lane and Stepney Green". So 1-2 metres seems to be out by quite a bit.
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Thank you for the update - I didn't realize how much the technology had improved over the past few years.
My 1-2metre/day was based on the first generation borers used in Toronto about ten years ago. The five year old models in Toronto worked at around 10metres/day and the latest (3rd generation) ones are doing significantly better (although I don't think they're making the 38metres/day of the Crossrail borers).
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"My 1-2 metre/day was based on the first generation borers used in Toronto about ten years ago. "
Boring machines have gotten more exciting since then.
Re: He'll need to go deep & fast (Score:2)
Don't know the terrain is like where musk is boring, but cross rail bored through silt and stiff clay. London is a river city and sits on lots of clay. Great for boring through. The channel tunnel got only a couple of meters per day because it was solid rock.
http://www.tunneltalk.com/Cros... [tunneltalk.com]
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how deep do you have to tunnel to make sure you don't hit anything man-made?
Deeper than the last guy (is what she said, I know, I know). And hey, once you're done, you have made something man-made to hit at the new, previously unoccupied depth.
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Well, there's always the Uber approach -- tunnel at whatever depth you want, and if you hit something man-made, just keep drilling right through it and see if anyone ever notices or complains.
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Then they should at least rename to Unter. Or Ünter, for the sake of consistency.
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Otherwise he'll get run into massive amounts of cost and delays due to existing underground infrastructure - of which some old elements may not be marked accurately (or even at all) on any map.
Supposing he's talking about creating a subway system for the Los Angeles area, going deep may be no help. There are currently over 4000 [wikipedia.org] operating oil wells in the Los Angeles Basin, and thousands of abandoned ones. Not to mention the whole basin at subway depths is soft, sedimentary, and tectonically active. I was under the impression that there are good geological reasons why LA doesn't have a subway system. The boring is the easy part; coming up with a tunnel liner that can withstand constant low gra
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The biggest problem is usually the methane and not the seismic issues though.
Underground infrastructure isn't really the problm (Score:5, Informative)
The reason is that SoCal is full of oil. If you visit, you'll see functioning oil pumps scattered around in random places [theatlantic.com]. It bubbles out of the ground naturally in the La Brea Tar Pits, and into the surrounding ocean as underwater oil seeps [aoghs.org]. When they dug the first tunnels for the Red line, the workers returned the next day to find oil and tar seeping in through the walls of the freshly-dug tunnel. They had to stop construction until they could come up with new ways to hold back the seepage and insure it wouldn't become a problem in the future decades of subway operation. (The Big Dig was expensive because of similar problems, except with seawater seepage.)
Oh yeah, the earthquakes tend to be a problem too. Especially if your tunnel crosses over a fault line.
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Obviously there were cost overruns because of things discovered while boring the tunnels, but I wonder how much of that 10x overrun was because of spectacularly bad planning and complete dishonesty on the part of the people who did the planning and the contractors who did the bidding. Mass transit projects have a long history of being over-budget and late, and not by a little. It leads one to think that project approval might be gained by having a dishonest price tag up front, and then the project survive
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It could also be happening almost every single time on these large projects because every single one is unique, with it's own set of unique and unforeseen problems. There's not always much heritage knowledge that can be used to predictably plan such a project, and issues can balloon into major reworks if they're only discovered late. Yes, there's some dishonesty and some negligence, but also some things that just could not have been foreseen or planned for. Hell, sometimes it's a shit estimate because of th
Another dream to sell! (Score:1)
I'm sure it will work, and not completely be supported by govt handouts and investor money. I'm sure it will turn a real profit.
just start digging will not be Boring when the hit (Score:2)
just start digging will not be Boring when they hit sometime up till the court part.
Super Villian (Score:3)
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I don't know if he has a cat. That would be the real topper. A fluffy white cat...
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Off his rocker (Score:2)
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He can't. Not of the US anyway, not without a Constitutional Amendment. He's African-American. ;-)
He's doing fine right where he is, anyway.
Like a kid in a (methamphetamine) candy store (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't running:
- A car design and manufacturing company
- A rocket launcher and capsule design and manufacturing company
- A lithium batter design and manufacturing company
- Managing a very high speed mass transportation concept
enough for one person?
It's not like Tesla cars are perfect or that SpaceX launcher's aren't blowing up on the pad and I don't think battery one has come out of SolarCity yet.
Mr. Musk has come up with some great ideas, but I think he needs to keep his (business) interests limited to ensure that they are all successful and outstanding products.
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I think much better criticism is to point out that tunneling isn't cost effective. Especially in milder climates like in California, multi-level raised highways are probably much better approach.
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> but I think he needs to keep his (business) interests limited to ensure that they are all successful
I think that's probably where someone else would be better. He gets the ball rolling in very hard areas and I would hate to see him bogged down in management.
Maybe "flying [electric] cars" are the future...
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Yes because the answer to preventing rockets from blowing up on the pad is for a CEO who has no idea about rocket science to sit in the room and demand the problems away?
Do you realise that innovators, investors, and entrepreneurs don't exactly sit around getting in the nitty gritty of the companies right?
But hey let's also ignore that so far only one SpaceX mission hasn't been a success, even if many of them have gone bang AFTER a successful mission. Let's ignore that Solarcity has already not only deliver
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Tesla / SolarCity have indeed shipped and installed plenty of batteries, with this being probably the most prominent example [solarcity.com].
There was even a Slashdot article [slashdot.org] about it less than a month ago.
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Unless Mars turns out to have caves, dig and cover is likely to be the best way to construct radiation shielding.
Even on earth, tunnel boring machines are mostly used where dig and cover is impossible (under cites, through a mountain, under the English channel etc).
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Why wouldn't he just hire the specialist if and when he needs it?
Tunnel boring is specialized and pretty advanced at this point. Dedicated machines to bore anything from conduit between manholes and highway tunnels.
If he's doing it, he thinks he needs the knowledge under his control. Likely he is thinking of Mars, cave systems and living space. Maybe the moon though, water ice extraction for fuel, more immediate and would require new work to make ice tunnel boring machines. 10 years on his presumed pla
None. (Score:1, Funny)
Mr. Musk,
Sir, I apologise for disturbing your inane self-narration, but I must kindly request that you shut up.
Sincerely,
Some internet loser who doesn't even own a yacht.
Elon, there's other stuff to do (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally have thought up half a dozen cheap ways to give drivers who are approaching traffic lights enough information that they don't have to hit it red and stop --- things that work like the countdowns provided by pedestrian walk lights. And it doesn't have to be mandatory. If maybe 30% of drivers use the inforrmation to coast through, then the other 70% will have no choice. A lot of gas could probably be saved.
This sort of thing has probably been patented many times but I've never see any mention of it anywhere. Take it and run, Elon.
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I'm really surprised that more traffic engineers don't time lights on major arterials just to keep traffic moving. One of the places I've seen timed lights in action is in downtown Salem, Oregon - if you go 28 to 30 mph you can go from one end of Commercial Street to the other without stopping unless someone in front of you does something dumb.
This seems like a fairly obvious thing to do to mitigate congestion and pollution, and yet doesn't see wide implementation for reasons beyond my understanding.
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Many retailers strongly dislike timing the lights like that. They'd prefer you stop at a lot of red lights so that you notice their store while you're waiting for the light.
You'll even get to see their expensive signage for their exciting 0% interest* financing
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I personally have thought up half a dozen cheap ways to give drivers who are approaching traffic lights enough information that they don't have to hit it red and stop --- things that work like the countdowns provided by pedestrian walk lights.
These are common in many other countries, and they work well. I have no idea why they aren't used in America.
They look like this [kompas.com].
Another good and common idea is instead of traffic lights cycling through (green)-(yellow)-(red)-(green), have them cycle through (green)-(green+yellow)-(red)-(red+yellow)-(green). This warns people when the light is about to turn green, so they can get ready to go, and helps traffic flow more quickly. I have never seen this done in America.
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restarting the engine doesn't come without cost. And, light timing doesn't require the fleet of vehicles being driven on the road to be completely changed out.
Why in fuck would you say that light timing doesn't need to be done because 5% of the cars on the road will shut off the engine while you are standing on the brakes...sometimes? That might take today's dumbest post award.
Re-invent the subways? (Score:2)
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How about just building stores within walking distance of homes?
Aerospace company stock spikes due to DYAC (Score:2)
#fakenews #autocorrupt #dyac
With those tweets (Score:1)
The ultimate first-world problem. (Score:3)
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Also, people who think that everyone would rather spend time in a driverless car or a tube pod rather than with their hands on the wheel and their foot on the accelerator are mis-judging up to a third of the travel population.
Please. In real life, you're not driving with your hands on the wheel and your foot on the accelerator and the top down on your new convertible through a wide open road through endless rolling hills in the warn friendly sun with the wind blowing through your long luxurious hair while women swoon and men seethe in jealousy and the supermodel sitting beside you gently caresses your leg and YES THIS IS YOUR FANTASY JUST ADMIT IT!
In real life, your foot is shuffling back and forth between the accelerator and t
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Also, people who think that everyone would rather spend time in a driverless car or a tube pod rather than with their hands on the wheel and their foot on the accelerator are mis-judging up to a third of the travel population.
No. There's a big difference between driving for fun and driving to commute. To be clear I love driving, I would just not ever like to do it on the way to or from or for work (unless I change careers and become a race driver) ever again.
The ultimate first-world problem.
Yes. Large population scale inefficiencies such as people stuck in traffic instead of working or enjoying themselves, power grids running non-optimally due to swinging demands, and having to throw away a rocket after each use really are first world problems. And? Just becaus
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Careful about the generalizations you make.
I love driving. I really do. To the point where some friends and I are making a cheap endurance racer so we can run some 16-hour in a weekend races. That being said, there's some drives that I would love to let the car take care of while I do something more engaging. Ever driven between Cincinnati and Columbus? Portland and Eugene? Bay Area and Southern California? Anywhere in Nebraska? These are painful, stupefyingly boring drives with nothing to look at,
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Yeah, I kinda got that back when (Score:2)
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Roads belong underground (Score:3)
I've long thought that ultimately roads should be underground. I would absolutely love to live in a subdivision with underground roads. Think how wonderful it would be to walk outside your house and only have walking and bicycle paths! In the winter, you would never have to worry about icy roads or snow plows, which also means you would have vastly fewer potholes in the roads.
We've already learned to put much of our other infrastructure underground. My neighborhood has all the wires buried. The only reason older neighborhoods still have above ground wires is the cost of burying them.
Cost.
Yup, that's the only problem here. I fear that even if the boring of the tunnel were free, the cost of tunnels would be prohibitive in most situations (you have to build a secure wall and ceiling, and you have to install a ventilation system along with lighting). I suppose if your boring machine had a built-in fusion reactor, it could melt what it bores through and create a nice solid shell and even leave a nice road surface. If you only allow electric cars in the tunnels, you can forego the ventilation system.
I think this is still science fiction for now, but if anyone can figure out how to make it work with technology that can be built today, it's Elon Musk.
Re: Roads belong underground (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it was Stephen Colbert who made an attempt to describe the Lincoln Tunnel to people who didn't live in New York:
Imagine trying to get that contents of this container of jelly beans into this bucket, putting them all through these two drinking straws...Also, all of those jelly beans are late to work.
A major problem is when accidents happen in tunnels. There is literally nowhere for anyone - including emergency vehicles - to go. Now, accidents in tunnels tend to be of the fender bender variety, but when a vehicle is rendered inoperable, you're just plain screwed. Making tunnels the way roads are built as a general rule is not the best of ideas - it's why subways make more sense as long as the stops can pick up and drop off enough people to nudge the needle of the rest of traffic. Manhattan would be utterly impassable without the subway moving half a million people a day.
Nobody likes traffic, and nobody likes parking. LA has its problems due not simply to cost, but the lack of a useful alternative when dealing when that level of population density independent of a useful mass transit system.
Traffic is already a solved problem (Score:2)
Cities forcing businesses to provide free, abundant parking (this is the norm in the USA) and then wondering why they have a traffic problem is like having standing water on your property and wondering why you have a mosquito problem.
Like I said.......... (Score:2, Informative)
"Musk has also been working on resolving his frustration with traffic issues through above-ground means with his Hyperloop venture, which proposes a plan for mass-transit pods moving through above-ground tubes."
Like I've said before, this Hyperloop horsecrap is NEVER going to happen. It's classic "pie in the sky" and will never be built due to a variety of issues, not the least of which are the insurmountable engineering problems. Then add stuff like right-of-way issues, safety concerns, fragility, security
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As a "pie in the sky" project, the Sonic Cruiser had the advantage of using actual sky.
is it "Boring" or Boaring"... (Score:2)
...because I kind of thought he might be going off to Georgia to hunt one of those giant boars they show all the time on Youtube. It seems like something rich people would do.
I welcome our tunneling overlords (Score:2)
I for one welcome Elon Musk's genetically engineered tunneling creatures: http://imgur.com/a/lfc9i [imgur.com]
Needed on Mars (Score:2)
If you recall, Musk previous stated that mining would have to be done on Mars. I think it's likely that he's working on automated mining because boring is one facet of mining. It could also be used to make underground tunnels on Mars between modules.
BigBertha (Score:2)
Enginners (Score:2)
The London yellow pages used to have an entry "Boring, see: engineers"
Hahahaha (Score:2)
We are not in territory... (Score:2)
...where Elon Musk does not know how much he doesn't know. Believe me, unless he's "boring" down 1 KM or so, he's going to have HUGE problems with existing infrastructure (not pipes, so much as pilings and things that hold up large buildings). And, there's no central compilation of those details that have been installed over the past 50 years!
Boring may be what he bends his pick on :-)
Bore the shit out of $City (Score:2)
You know, if they ever dig any tunnels to help a city's water treatment plants, they could say "We bore the shit outta Cleveland".
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I was wondering whether somebody would comment on the Mars connection. Musk doesn't seem to do anything without there being a Mars connection.
Well observed. (Although radiation isn't that extreme, it is a concern ... as are meteorites that the thin atmosphere also doesn't shield too well from. This may be as much about mining (digging for ice deposits?) as about tunnels to live in.)
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Switzerland for Example. Where most flat countries have bypasses to go around towns, Switzerland simply has tunnels.