4 ms·

This is how it worked before Elon Musk reinvented it by buying a sewer boring machine and running it dozens of feet under a desert.

anonu 7y ago
I'm not sure if your comment is meant to be snarky. But seriously... What is Elon doing differently?
- robbiep 7y ago
  As I understand it (and I am certainly not qualified in any regard with respect to this type of engineering) he is aiming to increase velocity by decreasing diameter (ie couple meter diameter vs 10m diameter) and then also looking at how they can ‘juice’ the machine using engineering magic
  - iamtheworstdev 7y ago
    And I'm just going off of Wikipedia here on the Boring Company's page but apparently they modified a commercial borer to be 3x as fast as the original and are currently trying to manufacture a borer of their own design which they claim will be 10x faster.
    - abduhl 7y ago
      The Boring Company took 2 years to go 6000 ft at 15’ diameter excavated. There are plenty of ways to slice and dice this number up but the short version is that this is not faster than how the original TBM performed (let alone 3x) - I know the guys that Elon bought the TBM from and the guys that those guys bought it from. As I’ve said in previous posts about this, TBM operation is not the limiting factor in building a tunnel. Permit acquisition and third parties are the longest part of tunneling projects by far.
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    The London Tube was built with a 3.58m diameter. Jubilee Line Extension had a 4.4m diameter, Crossrail will have 6.2m diameter. So the diameter reduction is not that much smaller, and it certainly isn’t the smallest attempted. The original Tube tunnels actually have several problems - the tight diameter means that air conditioning is basically an impossibility (no room for the equipment in vehicles and nowhere to output the heat), and it makes maintenance and emergency evacuation annoying and hazardous if you can’t have a walkway for people to walk alongside the trackway.
    - robbiep 7y ago
      most of the original tunneling was done by hand, so i'm not sure if it's directly comparable. There was an interesting article regarding the heat transfer to the surrounding ground recently - [0] that i'm sure you'll find interesting if you haven't seen it before!
      - bobthepanda 7y ago
        Jubilee Line Extension was the '90s and Crossrail is opening soon, so those definitely weren't by hand! I have seen articles about it, as well as a recent proposal to use that heat for heating homes. But it just illustrates the (many) potential pitfalls of small diameter tunnels, because you really don't want your tunnel to become an oven after a few decades of heat generated from braking. Other pitfalls include: You need space for adequate ventilation. This is less of a problem with electric propulsion, but you do still need it for emergencies (like a fire). And then there's the issue of noise; if your vehicle is too small compared to the tunnel, then the air being forced out once you get to a larger space (like the outside or a station) creates loud noise. Japanese high speed rail trains have much stranger aerodynamic shapes than European ones because they built smaller diameter tunnels and this ended up causing noise issues at higher speeds.
    - 420codebro 7y ago
      Also the lack of a meaningful buffer of air between the trains and the tunnel wall results in a lot of extra heat (convection) to be absorbed by the surrounding environment, making the underground more hot.
- neotek 7y ago
  Making promises he can't keep about things he doesn't properly understand to convince well-meaning but ultimately naive investors to keep coughing up the dough, as usual.
  - jfoster 7y ago
    Trying to do something isn't a promise.
    - neotek 7y ago
      No, saying "Boring company will transport your car all the way into your garage" is a promise. Saying "The Boring Company will be using dirt from tunnel digging to create bricks for low cost housing" is a promise. So is "Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins." Elon Musk has a practically unbroken track record of making wildly speculative, overconfident promises about all sorts of technologies that never materialise, and gullible people lap it up like it's going out of fashion. People are dying because of Tesla's irresponsible and misleading marketing, and Musk shouldn't get a pass just because some people think he's a visionary.
      - jfoster 7y ago
        I think most people understand that when he says those things, he's stating ambitions rather than "making promises."
        neotek 7y ago
        Tell that to the families mourning the deaths of the people who didn't realise something called AutoPilot and dishonestly marketed as FSD capable is just an ambition.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  It's hard to give a non-snarky answer because The Boring Company has been very light on actual details, as most of their publicity has focused on the alternative transit method they propose instead of TBM details. Even most of the details on tunneling they suggest aren't meaningful for making it faster; the only one that really is making TBMs run 24/7. The only reason Elon thinks he can make it faster that I can divine is engineering magic.
  - username444 7y ago
    To be fair, people said this about Tesla and SpaceX as well. Given his track record, I'm inclined to believe he understands the problem space and how to solve it better than you or I. Yes, the burden is on him to execute, but that will take him years. The argument that "I don't understand it therefore it's invalid" holds little meaning. Musk isn't a person who gets this deep into a project without a high likelihood of success, historically.

anonu 7y ago

I'm not sure if your comment is meant to be snarky. But seriously... What is Elon doing differently?

robbiep 7y ago
As I understand it (and I am certainly not qualified in any regard with respect to this type of engineering) he is aiming to increase velocity by decreasing diameter (ie couple meter diameter vs 10m diameter) and then also looking at how they can ‘juice’ the machine using engineering magic
- iamtheworstdev 7y ago
  And I'm just going off of Wikipedia here on the Boring Company's page but apparently they modified a commercial borer to be 3x as fast as the original and are currently trying to manufacture a borer of their own design which they claim will be 10x faster.
  - abduhl 7y ago
    The Boring Company took 2 years to go 6000 ft at 15’ diameter excavated. There are plenty of ways to slice and dice this number up but the short version is that this is not faster than how the original TBM performed (let alone 3x) - I know the guys that Elon bought the TBM from and the guys that those guys bought it from. As I’ve said in previous posts about this, TBM operation is not the limiting factor in building a tunnel. Permit acquisition and third parties are the longest part of tunneling projects by far.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  The London Tube was built with a 3.58m diameter. Jubilee Line Extension had a 4.4m diameter, Crossrail will have 6.2m diameter. So the diameter reduction is not that much smaller, and it certainly isn’t the smallest attempted. The original Tube tunnels actually have several problems - the tight diameter means that air conditioning is basically an impossibility (no room for the equipment in vehicles and nowhere to output the heat), and it makes maintenance and emergency evacuation annoying and hazardous if you can’t have a walkway for people to walk alongside the trackway.
  - robbiep 7y ago
    most of the original tunneling was done by hand, so i'm not sure if it's directly comparable. There was an interesting article regarding the heat transfer to the surrounding ground recently - [0] that i'm sure you'll find interesting if you haven't seen it before!
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      Jubilee Line Extension was the '90s and Crossrail is opening soon, so those definitely weren't by hand! I have seen articles about it, as well as a recent proposal to use that heat for heating homes. But it just illustrates the (many) potential pitfalls of small diameter tunnels, because you really don't want your tunnel to become an oven after a few decades of heat generated from braking. Other pitfalls include: You need space for adequate ventilation. This is less of a problem with electric propulsion, but you do still need it for emergencies (like a fire). And then there's the issue of noise; if your vehicle is too small compared to the tunnel, then the air being forced out once you get to a larger space (like the outside or a station) creates loud noise. Japanese high speed rail trains have much stranger aerodynamic shapes than European ones because they built smaller diameter tunnels and this ended up causing noise issues at higher speeds.
  - 420codebro 7y ago
    Also the lack of a meaningful buffer of air between the trains and the tunnel wall results in a lot of extra heat (convection) to be absorbed by the surrounding environment, making the underground more hot.
neotek 7y ago
Making promises he can't keep about things he doesn't properly understand to convince well-meaning but ultimately naive investors to keep coughing up the dough, as usual.
- jfoster 7y ago
  Trying to do something isn't a promise.
  - neotek 7y ago
    No, saying "Boring company will transport your car all the way into your garage" is a promise. Saying "The Boring Company will be using dirt from tunnel digging to create bricks for low cost housing" is a promise. So is "Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins." Elon Musk has a practically unbroken track record of making wildly speculative, overconfident promises about all sorts of technologies that never materialise, and gullible people lap it up like it's going out of fashion. People are dying because of Tesla's irresponsible and misleading marketing, and Musk shouldn't get a pass just because some people think he's a visionary.
    - jfoster 7y ago
      I think most people understand that when he says those things, he's stating ambitions rather than "making promises."
      - neotek 7y ago
        Tell that to the families mourning the deaths of the people who didn't realise something called AutoPilot and dishonestly marketed as FSD capable is just an ambition.
jcranmer 7y ago
It's hard to give a non-snarky answer because The Boring Company has been very light on actual details, as most of their publicity has focused on the alternative transit method they propose instead of TBM details. Even most of the details on tunneling they suggest aren't meaningful for making it faster; the only one that really is making TBMs run 24/7. The only reason Elon thinks he can make it faster that I can divine is engineering magic.
- username444 7y ago
  To be fair, people said this about Tesla and SpaceX as well. Given his track record, I'm inclined to believe he understands the problem space and how to solve it better than you or I. Yes, the burden is on him to execute, but that will take him years. The argument that "I don't understand it therefore it's invalid" holds little meaning. Musk isn't a person who gets this deep into a project without a high likelihood of success, historically.