Boring Company Approved To Build Futuristic Garage That Would Connect To Underground Commuter Tunnel (mercurynews.com) 89
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.
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.
Sounds Familiar (Score:1)
Isn't this the plot of Better Call Saul?
FP?
Re: actually (Score:4, Interesting)
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...."
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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
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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?
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What, they haven't landed an air force contract in the past week? Heavens to betsy!
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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 wil
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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.
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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.
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I so want to see the craigslist ad for this one ;)
Hawthorne (Score:2)
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.
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We assumed it was in CA otherwise Musk would have to dig a very long tunnel to connect it to his Hype R Loop
Re:Passenger cars in a hyperloop tunnel? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [businessinsider.com] and one fatality per 85 million miles [wikipedia.org].
Teslas have been driven 9 billion miles [electrek.co]. This should correspond to 450 fires and 106 deaths.
Where are they?
Concerning fires, here's a list of Tesla fires [autoblog.com] 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 [reddit.com] 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? (Score:5, Informative)
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 [go.com] 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 [jalopnik.com].
Want something more recent? Just seven days ago, Ford recalled two million trucks [reuters.com] due to fire risks. GM's last major fire-related recall was a couple years [cnn.com], 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 [theverge.com] 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.
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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 ti
Iced? (Score:2)
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Re: This is how the Lizard People take over (Score:2)
You forgot to account for the ongoing hybridization project.
Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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
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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 mill
Re:Hopefully soon, more info about this aspect (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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 ter
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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 mome
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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.
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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 [gao.gov] 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 [dot.gov] Federal highw
And so Elon Musk (Score:4, Funny)
..completes his transformation from hero to villain by having a secret underground lair
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Indeed. [twitter.com] It was only a matter of time [twitter.com]. I look forward to the upcoming Musk startups, Giant Lasers Incorporated and Sharks Unlimited.
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You forgot the fingerquotes around "Lasers"
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Surely he got the idea from his side gig as the Green Hornet.
How 'bout that hyperloop (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 [youtube.com], here [youtu.be] (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 fo
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Laughing Stock (Score:1)
Another step towards Caves of Steel (Score:2)
Another step towards Caves of Steel ... fine with me.
Nature is overrated. (And it tries to bite you too much.)
Also in the news (Score:2)
Funny company going to provide all the balloons for the big opening.
Sweet, a parking garage. Almost there! (Score:2)
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.
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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!