5 ms·

How is The Boring Company doing lately? There will be huge induced demand for tunnels if they manage to deliver even close to their goals.

grecy 2y ago
Slow and steady progress. They’re just about to go big in Vegas, with tunnels the length of the strip.
- youngtaff 2y ago
  The strip is 4 miles long… when Musk company can bore longer, wider tunnels avoiding other infrastructure e.g. London tube lines, sewers etc then they might have something to shout about
  - ggm 2y ago
    I believe he is deliberately targeting low process burden, low soil resistance targets. He isn't aggressively chasing contracts for complex, deep, large tunnels working around existing infra, or rail, he's chasing places which want disruptive change in transport. Nobody has explained to me what the boring company has actually done innovating TBM, the machines themselveds distinct from a cash injection and some energy from Musk as lead investor. TBM are flow process. It's a pipeline of inputs and outputs. It's scheduling. The LV tunnel isn't a complete success either. It's not operating completely as promised yet is it?
DonHopkins 2y ago
[flagged]
- h3rsko 2y ago
  Its a special "kind of fraud and failure" that launched 90% of mass to LEO in 2024.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    "Success is the child of audacity." -- Benjamin Disraeli "Audacity, more audacity, always audacity." -- Georges Jacques Danton "The first quality that is needed is audacity." -- Winston Churchill
  - aredox 2y ago
    Shotwell has launched 90% of mass to LEO in 2024. Elon, meanwhile, is shitposting all day and most of the night on X.
jeltz 2y ago
Is there any reason to think they will be able to? They are just going the same thing as everyone else but started later. Another player might lower costs slightly but not much.
- ReptileMan 2y ago
  No reason, but Elon style is - if he delivers to deliver qualitive and not quantitative improvements to technology.
- youngtaff 2y ago
  They’re also boring much smaller tunnels which have much smaller costs
stephen_g 2y ago
I don’t believe they have advanced the field in any way. They didn’t really have any solid ideas, just the idea that it would be really cool if tunnelling could be made cheaper. Surprise surprise, it’s actually a highly advanced, mature field and there wasn’t actually any low-hanging fruit for inexperienced startup guys to disrupt… The only thing they’ve done with their Vegas tunnel is to make it cheaper by making it too small to have proper emergency egress, but they can get away with it since with just their chauffeured Teslas going through it only fitting a few people each (making the system extremely low-capacity), they can’t really fit many people in at once, and it’s short enough so combined that makes it not that much of an issue. In the newest section of the Vegas tunnel they have now only built a one-way tunnel instead of a tunnel for each way, making it cheaper again but low-capacity to a basically comedic level.

grecy 2y ago

Slow and steady progress. They’re just about to go big in Vegas, with tunnels the length of the strip.

youngtaff 2y ago
The strip is 4 miles long… when Musk company can bore longer, wider tunnels avoiding other infrastructure e.g. London tube lines, sewers etc then they might have something to shout about
- ggm 2y ago
  I believe he is deliberately targeting low process burden, low soil resistance targets. He isn't aggressively chasing contracts for complex, deep, large tunnels working around existing infra, or rail, he's chasing places which want disruptive change in transport. Nobody has explained to me what the boring company has actually done innovating TBM, the machines themselveds distinct from a cash injection and some energy from Musk as lead investor. TBM are flow process. It's a pipeline of inputs and outputs. It's scheduling. The LV tunnel isn't a complete success either. It's not operating completely as promised yet is it?

DonHopkins 2y ago

[flagged]

h3rsko 2y ago
Its a special "kind of fraud and failure" that launched 90% of mass to LEO in 2024.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  "Success is the child of audacity." -- Benjamin Disraeli "Audacity, more audacity, always audacity." -- Georges Jacques Danton "The first quality that is needed is audacity." -- Winston Churchill
- aredox 2y ago
  Shotwell has launched 90% of mass to LEO in 2024. Elon, meanwhile, is shitposting all day and most of the night on X.

jeltz 2y ago

Is there any reason to think they will be able to? They are just going the same thing as everyone else but started later. Another player might lower costs slightly but not much.

ReptileMan 2y ago
No reason, but Elon style is - if he delivers to deliver qualitive and not quantitative improvements to technology.
youngtaff 2y ago
They’re also boring much smaller tunnels which have much smaller costs

stephen_g 2y ago

I don’t believe they have advanced the field in any way. They didn’t really have any solid ideas, just the idea that it would be really cool if tunnelling could be made cheaper. Surprise surprise, it’s actually a highly advanced, mature field and there wasn’t actually any low-hanging fruit for inexperienced startup guys to disrupt… The only thing they’ve done with their Vegas tunnel is to make it cheaper by making it too small to have proper emergency egress, but they can get away with it since with just their chauffeured Teslas going through it only fitting a few people each (making the system extremely low-capacity), they can’t really fit many people in at once, and it’s short enough so combined that makes it not that much of an issue. In the newest section of the Vegas tunnel they have now only built a one-way tunnel instead of a tunnel for each way, making it cheaper again but low-capacity to a basically comedic level.