Elon The Boring Company - Tunnel 2

[spacenut]

SpaceX could set up a boring machine on Mars.  Bore from a central location in as many directions possible.  Excess soil could be used to cover above ground repurposed horizontal Starships.  Below ground a small rail system could be installed in the center bottom of the tunnel.  This could be used to say have sidewall greenhouses that a human or robot could prepare and harvest food while riding the mini train and place the food in train carts to bring back.  Above ground habitats could be used for experiments, processing and work areas while below ground along with growing food could have sleeping quarters for people to escape any radiation for about 8 hours.  Below ground could also store waste water for reuse watering plants.  Above ground could store fresh water say in a Starship left vertical for gravity feed.  This would be a combination of above and below ground.  Above ground could also store various vehicles that would be used on Mars.  Nothing wasted from boring.  Some excess boring soil could be used to make a berm around a rocket launching and landing facility to stop any debris the rocket plume may cause. 

[meekGee]

Digging small tunnels fast and putting trains on rails in them (with a small side of doing that enough to make lots of trains and thus each individual train cheap) is the obvious solution, but apparently too boring for Boring.

Two questions...

1. What is the advantage of forcing the vehicles to stick to rails?

Rolling resistance.

2. What is the advantage of not allowing the "carriages" to move independently?

Closer minimum safe following distance, which improves both throughput and drag.

Runaway subsystem optimization is the great evil that SpaceX solved with Falcon.

It's easy to get lost in easily-quantifiable details such as rilling resistance and drag, and miss the softer but more important benefits of having cars operate as both centrally-controlled units inside the system and regular individual units when outside the system.

[Twark_Main]

I'm convinced guys! Subways are clearly unworkable.

Anyway I was just pointing out that there are well understood 'conventional' answers to steveleach's questions. People seem to have mistaken that for me being pro-subway and anti-Loop.

Personally I think there are pros and cons to both approaches. I'm interested to see (while remaining appropriately skeptical about) how cheap a price Loop can ultimately achieve.

I'm no Loop hater, but I also acknowledge that this race ain't over yet...

[Twark_Main]

And to state the obvious, it's not just a simple cost race, it's about which "ecological niche" in the transport network is best for Loop vs subway, and how big are the relative sizes (and profit shares) of those two niches.

[meekGee]

I'm convinced guys! Subways are clearly unworkable.

Anyway I was just pointing out that there are well understood 'conventional' answers to steveleach's questions. People seem to have mistaken that for me being pro-subway and anti-Loop.

Personally I think there are pros and cons to both approaches. I'm interested to see (while remaining appropriately skeptical about) how cheap a price Loop can ultimately achieve.

I'm no Loop hater, but I also acknowledge that this race ain't over yet...

Fair enough.

"Loop" btw is such a terrible name, maybe it originates from a hyper-less hyperloop, but what i go on about is a very non-loopy system.  A mesh, really.  Something that merges free (maybe autonomous) individual control at the periphery, centrally managed control nearer town-centers, and aggregated convoys in high-throughput lanes.  More tunnels near town-centers, less tunnels in the burbs.  Some cars being Johnny-cabs, some uberesque ride shares, and some individually owned and operated honest to goodness god fearing tax paying law abiding normal cars.

Never as hard core-core efficient as a fully utilized rail line, never as chaotic as a free-for-all traffic log-jam.

'tis the future, as is the common refrain goes.

[Oersted]

SpaceX could set up a boring machine on Mars.  Bore from a central location in as many directions possible.  Excess soil could be used to cover above ground repurposed horizontal Starships.  Below ground a small rail system could be installed in the center bottom of the tunnel.  This could be used to say have sidewall greenhouses that a human or robot could prepare and harvest food while riding the mini train and place the food in train carts to bring back.  Above ground habitats could be used for experiments, processing and work areas while below ground along with growing food could have sleeping quarters for people to escape any radiation for about 8 hours.  Below ground could also store waste water for reuse watering plants.  Above ground could store fresh water say in a Starship left vertical for gravity feed.  This would be a combination of above and below ground.  Above ground could also store various vehicles that would be used on Mars.  Nothing wasted from boring.  Some excess boring soil could be used to make a berm around a rocket launching and landing facility to stop any debris the rocket plume may cause. 

Elon made the Boring Company to drill tunnels on Mars.

[Twark_Main]

SpaceX could set up a boring machine on Mars.  Bore from a central location in as many directions possible.  Excess soil could be used to cover above ground repurposed horizontal Starships.  Below ground a small rail system could be installed in the center bottom of the tunnel.  This could be used to say have sidewall greenhouses that a human or robot could prepare and harvest food while riding the mini train and place the food in train carts to bring back.  Above ground habitats could be used for experiments, processing and work areas while below ground along with growing food could have sleeping quarters for people to escape any radiation for about 8 hours.  Below ground could also store waste water for reuse watering plants.  Above ground could store fresh water say in a Starship left vertical for gravity feed.  This would be a combination of above and below ground.  Above ground could also store various vehicles that would be used on Mars.  Nothing wasted from boring.  Some excess boring soil could be used to make a berm around a rocket launching and landing facility to stop any debris the rocket plume may cause. 

Elon made the Boring Company to drill tunnels on Mars.

We should be super duper clear here. There are two ways this could be interpreted:

    1. There's technology overlap between TBC and SpaceX on Mars, which Musk knew all along. This one is true.

    2. TBC was always secretly "really" about Mars the whole time, and any Earthly application was just back-engineered from that. This one is false.

Incidentally, Musk has talked before about the story of why TBC was founded:

[Oersted]

I remember seeing a documentary about Musk, but cannot recall exactly which one it was, in which I believe Jurvetson says that Mars was the real objective of the Boring Company right from the beginning. Maybe someone else in here has seen it too? I would love to dig out (hehe) the quote, but am not able to right now.

The timing of the Boring Company and the TBM diameter of 8m, fitting perfectly inside Starship, also indicate this, IMHO. 

 

[meekGee]

I remember seeing a documentary about Musk, but cannot recall exactly which one it was, in which I believe Jurvetson says that Mars was the real objective of the Boring Company right from the beginning. Maybe someone else in here has seen it too? I would love to dig out (hehe) the quote, but am not able to right now.

The timing of the Boring Company and the TBM diameter of 8m, fitting perfectly inside Starship, also indicate this, IMHO.

8 m?

I don't know that Mars is the express purpose of TBC, but certainly it isn't an add-on - that application was on their minds from the start.

[StraumliBlight]

I remember seeing a documentary about Musk, but cannot recall exactly which one it was, in which I believe Jurvetson says that Mars was the real objective of the Boring Company right from the beginning. Maybe someone else in here has seen it too? I would love to dig out (hehe) the quote, but am not able to right now.

The timing of the Boring Company and the TBM diameter of 8m, fitting perfectly inside Starship, also indicate this, IMHO.

https://twitter.com/boringcompany/status/1856750432909234401

Though Prufrock boring machines are currently 300 - 400 tons.

https://twitter.com/SpaceAbhi/status/2000033326703464761

[Oersted]

Though Prufrock boring machines are currently 300 - 400 tons.

Some assembly required.

[crandles57]

Though Prufrock boring machines are currently 300 - 400 tons.

Some assembly required.

Only parts that can fit through these doors? Maybe it is sufficient far in future that it will be possible to cut up the starship to get it out (or does the boring machine drill through the starship?  :lol ), but building starship with large parts in the payload bay sounds tricky? 

[Twark_Main]

these doors

Have there ever been two renderings of Starship that use the same cargo door layout?   

[Crispy]

First, you have tunnel diameter and digging. This is irrespective of what you put in the tunnels, and we have real-world examples of both PRT (e.g. LV Loop) and standard mass transit (e.g. Tube). Smaller tunnels has tended to win out here, with very few exceptions, as it is easier to dig two minimum-bore tunnels than one tunnel that could fit two minimum-bore cross sections within it.

The exceptions are interesting though. With metros, the big cost is in the stations, not the tunnels. Some metro lines with closely-spaced stations have therefore run both tracks in one big tunnel (stacked or side by side) that is also large enough to contain the stations. This reduces construction complexity and can work out cheaper than small tunnels with custom station caverns.

[RedLineTrain]

The timing of the Boring Company and the TBM diameter of 8m, fitting perfectly inside Starship, also indicate this, IMHO.

This is the first time that I have seen an 8-meter diameter mentioned.  Do you have a source for this?

[RedLineTrain]

UNLV declined a free station from TBC, which seems insane.  Revolves around the university not wanting to make any money off of unused infrastructure apparently.

That said, they were happy to grant a small easement for dual tunnels on the way to the airport.  Details attached.

Interim university president Chris Heavey said the university looked at the pros and cons and decided to pass on The Boring Company's offer to build a station out for them for free.

"After extensive consultation with our team, we declined that offer. The reason, ultimately, is because our parking service does not connect directly to DMV and therefore, the types of tickets that we give to people are not enforceable beyond the boundaries of our campus. One of the concerns became managing the parking that might be associated with that station," Heavey explained. "We were worried about the Thomas & Mack Center parking lot becoming the free parking lot for the airport and basically, people leaving their cars in our parking lot and jumping on the station to access the airport and us having very little ability to control that."

https://www.ktnv.com/news/unlv-will-not-be-adding-vegas-loop-station-university-president-says?ktnv

[RedLineTrain]

The Environmental Impact Assessment for the Music City Loop is attached.  All clear.  It only includes a couple of stations and the Broadway alignment appears to be more or less notional.  The whole map is as of October.

[Twark_Main]

university not wanting to make any money off of unused infrastructure apparently.

... tickets that we give to people are not enforceable

...

becoming the free parking lot for the airport

If the lot is free and they can't enforce the use of paid parking passes via parking tickets, I'm not sure how the university is supposed to "make money."

It sounds like what would actually happen is that freeloading outsiders would take up spaces and cause an under-supply problem for students/faculty/staff. Generally universities don't have an abundance of "extra" parking, and adding tollbooths would cause enormous bottlenecks.

[RedLineTrain]

If the lot is free and they can't enforce the use of paid parking passes via parking tickets, I'm not sure how the university is supposed to "make money."

Sounds like an operational detail that could be negotiated between the airport, Clark County, the LV Convention Center Authority, and the stadium authority.

The LV Convention Center Authority and the stadium authority (both headed by Steve Hill) wanted off-site parking that this could have provided.  That lot is hardly ever used.  It's a stadium parking lot.

[Twark_Main]

If the lot is free and they can't enforce the use of paid parking passes via parking tickets, I'm not sure how the university is supposed to "make money."

Sounds like an operational detail that could be negotiated between the airport, Clark County, the LV Convention Center Authority, and the stadium authority.

The LV Convention Center Authority and the stadium authority (both headed by Steve Hill) wanted off-site parking that this could have provided.  That lot is hardly ever used.  It's a stadium parking lot.

Sounds like the operational details were negotiated, but the other parties simply didn't offer a good enough deal.