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Elon Musk's D.C. To Baltimore Tunnel Sounds Worse Than Pointless

7 points by spazz 8y ago

true_tuna 8y ago
Careful. Musk doesn’t like criticism. He might smite you for talking like this.
aeternus 8y ago
Article is pretty short-sighted. The overall goal of the Boring Company is to substantially decrease the cost, and increase the speed of building tunnels. This is something that benefits public transit. Sure the initial demo where a slightly modified Tesla traveled through the tunnel is not practical, why does that matter? The challenge is digging tunnels quickly and efficiently, even if hyper-loop tech does not come to fruition, efficient tunnel digging can be used with traditional high-speed rail tech. Compare the state of underground transit in the US vs. other countries, there is clearly substantial room for improvement here.
- eesmith 8y ago
  If this is meant as an "initial demo" and not something which is usable or profitable, then why do it under 35 miles of (sub)urban land? How much money would they save by doing it on/under cheaper land, with fewer lawsuits, easier access to the TBM should there be problems like 'Bertha' had in Seattle, etc.? Shouldn't the "initial demo" be part of the "technical progress prior to the start of implementation" mentioned in the article?
- N_trglctc_joe 8y ago
  > The overall goal of the Boring Company is to substantially decrease the cost, and increase the speed of building tunnels. Good for it, but in the mean time a car tunnel would still have worse throughput than public transportation (less than two train's worth per day), rely on unproven technology (both for tunneling and moving the cars in a human-friendly way), and almost certainly not be financially viable (without massive subsidies). Yes we need better public transportation, but there are well-established methods for effecting this. We just need to invest in them instead of Musk's poorly-conceived flamethrower company.
  - aeternus 8y ago
    What are those well-established methods? The hyperloop was conceived by multiple SpaceX employees due to extreme disappointment with California's public transit proposal. This is from the original Hyperloop paper: > When the California “high speed” rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too. How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world? We can do better.
woodandsteel 8y ago
How often have the experts confidently told us that something Musk was planning to do would be a complete failure, and turned out to be wrong? Pretty often, I would say.
- eesmith 8y ago
  Could you help by saying which projects experts thought would be a "complete failure"? Three I can think of are 1) the original hyperloop proposal, 2) the mini-sub to rescue the people stuck in the Thai cave, and 3) car-based mini-tunnels as an better alternative form of transport. All of those objections, as far as I can tell, are correct. I would like this clarification because there are a large number of other goals which experts said would be impossible to achieve in the timeframe given. Consider that in 2014 he said that self-driving cars would be safer than humans in about two years. Now, at that point there were self-driving cars and in some circumstances they were already safer than humans. More so if you include automated trams on special tracks. Remember, the first nearly hands-free trip across the US was in 1995. However, at least some experts doubted it would happen in that time frame, and we still don't have such technology. We especially don't have it at the level that we can sleep while the car is driving, which in 2017 he implied we would have by 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/elon-musk-self-driving-cars-sleep-boring-company-tesla-spacex-futurism-a7711516.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/elon-musk-self-dr... Is that a "complete failure"? No. But were the experts who said it was not achievable in anywhere near the time frame given correct? Yes. As another example, in 2018 SpaceX said that there would be a crewed flight around the Moon. Didn't happen, and as I recall there were experts who doubted it - though they of course know from history that such flights are possible. If in 5 years there is a crewed flight around the Moon, does that make that prediction correct?
  - woodandsteel 8y ago
    Many experts predicted that Tesla would be a complete failure, that it would never produce electric cars that people would buy. Many experts predicted that SpaceX would be a complete failure, that it would never produce commercially successful space rockets, much less reusable ones. And the same experts are today continuing to tell us that Tesla is going to fail.

7 points by spazz 8y ago

Careful. Musk doesn’t like criticism. He might smite you for talking like this.

Article is pretty short-sighted. The overall goal of the Boring Company is to substantially decrease the cost, and increase the speed of building tunnels. This is something that benefits public transit. Sure the initial demo where a slightly modified Tesla traveled through the tunnel is not practical, why does that matter? The challenge is digging tunnels quickly and efficiently, even if hyper-loop tech does not come to fruition, efficient tunnel digging can be used with traditional high-speed rail tech. Compare the state of underground transit in the US vs. other countries, there is clearly substantial room for improvement here.

eesmith 8y ago
If this is meant as an "initial demo" and not something which is usable or profitable, then why do it under 35 miles of (sub)urban land? How much money would they save by doing it on/under cheaper land, with fewer lawsuits, easier access to the TBM should there be problems like 'Bertha' had in Seattle, etc.? Shouldn't the "initial demo" be part of the "technical progress prior to the start of implementation" mentioned in the article?
N_trglctc_joe 8y ago
> The overall goal of the Boring Company is to substantially decrease the cost, and increase the speed of building tunnels. Good for it, but in the mean time a car tunnel would still have worse throughput than public transportation (less than two train's worth per day), rely on unproven technology (both for tunneling and moving the cars in a human-friendly way), and almost certainly not be financially viable (without massive subsidies). Yes we need better public transportation, but there are well-established methods for effecting this. We just need to invest in them instead of Musk's poorly-conceived flamethrower company.
- aeternus 8y ago
  What are those well-established methods? The hyperloop was conceived by multiple SpaceX employees due to extreme disappointment with California's public transit proposal. This is from the original Hyperloop paper: > When the California “high speed” rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too. How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world? We can do better.

woodandsteel 8y ago

How often have the experts confidently told us that something Musk was planning to do would be a complete failure, and turned out to be wrong? Pretty often, I would say.

eesmith 8y ago
Could you help by saying which projects experts thought would be a "complete failure"? Three I can think of are 1) the original hyperloop proposal, 2) the mini-sub to rescue the people stuck in the Thai cave, and 3) car-based mini-tunnels as an better alternative form of transport. All of those objections, as far as I can tell, are correct. I would like this clarification because there are a large number of other goals which experts said would be impossible to achieve in the timeframe given. Consider that in 2014 he said that self-driving cars would be safer than humans in about two years. Now, at that point there were self-driving cars and in some circumstances they were already safer than humans. More so if you include automated trams on special tracks. Remember, the first nearly hands-free trip across the US was in 1995. However, at least some experts doubted it would happen in that time frame, and we still don't have such technology. We especially don't have it at the level that we can sleep while the car is driving, which in 2017 he implied we would have by 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/elon-musk-self-driving-cars-sleep-boring-company-tesla-spacex-futurism-a7711516.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/elon-musk-self-dr... Is that a "complete failure"? No. But were the experts who said it was not achievable in anywhere near the time frame given correct? Yes. As another example, in 2018 SpaceX said that there would be a crewed flight around the Moon. Didn't happen, and as I recall there were experts who doubted it - though they of course know from history that such flights are possible. If in 5 years there is a crewed flight around the Moon, does that make that prediction correct?
- woodandsteel 8y ago
  Many experts predicted that Tesla would be a complete failure, that it would never produce electric cars that people would buy. Many experts predicted that SpaceX would be a complete failure, that it would never produce commercially successful space rockets, much less reusable ones. And the same experts are today continuing to tell us that Tesla is going to fail.