Photo: Elon Musk on Instagram
Elon Musk may be associated mostly with Tesla, but he actually works on other projects as well during his sleepless nights. The SpaceX reusable rocket is already notorious, but unless you follow his enterprises more closely, you might have missed the news on the Boring Company.
As the name suggests, it's a company that bores. It has just finished a two-mile long tunnel under Los Angeles, and it will soon start working on extending it after the request was approved by the authorities. What's the purpose of digging so much dirt from under one of the world's busiest cities, you ask? Well, you might have just answered your own question.
Presumably while being caught in the proverbial LA traffic, Elon Musk took a break from thinking about colonizing Mars and decided to do something to help the poor people in the Californian city. In record time, he founded the Boring Company, got hold of an equally boring machine and started digging.
The idea was to create a multi-layered network of tunnels where electric sleds (or skates) roam freely and autonomously at 130 mph (210 km/h) delivering their cargo from one surface access point to another. "A bit like the subway does already?" you might say. Yes, except Musk's sleds would carry your personal vehicle, and not just your personal self.
It's still a work in progress, and more recently voices have started totting the idea of using the tunnels for a Hyperloop system. The truth is that digging the holes is the most difficult part, and they can decide what to do with them once they're done.
This is what the Boring Company focuses on: quicker and more efficient digging. We've seen Godot, the first electric mole that worked on the completed tunnel, but up to this point, we couldn't get a clear idea of what the tunnel's dimensions mean in reality.
That's not the case anymore as Elon Musk posted an image on Instagram with a Tesla Model S driving into a section of the completed tunnel. We were told the diameter would be 13.5 feet, which is about 4.1 meters. Looking at the Model S, which is 77.3 inches wide (1,964 mm), sitting inside the tunnel we'd say that seems just about right.
Bear in mind this is just a test so, if successful, the final tunnels might be adjusted to different sizes depending on needs. However, since Musk is all about the efficiency of digging, we doubt he'll up the scale significantly.
Presumably while being caught in the proverbial LA traffic, Elon Musk took a break from thinking about colonizing Mars and decided to do something to help the poor people in the Californian city. In record time, he founded the Boring Company, got hold of an equally boring machine and started digging.
The idea was to create a multi-layered network of tunnels where electric sleds (or skates) roam freely and autonomously at 130 mph (210 km/h) delivering their cargo from one surface access point to another. "A bit like the subway does already?" you might say. Yes, except Musk's sleds would carry your personal vehicle, and not just your personal self.
It's still a work in progress, and more recently voices have started totting the idea of using the tunnels for a Hyperloop system. The truth is that digging the holes is the most difficult part, and they can decide what to do with them once they're done.
This is what the Boring Company focuses on: quicker and more efficient digging. We've seen Godot, the first electric mole that worked on the completed tunnel, but up to this point, we couldn't get a clear idea of what the tunnel's dimensions mean in reality.
That's not the case anymore as Elon Musk posted an image on Instagram with a Tesla Model S driving into a section of the completed tunnel. We were told the diameter would be 13.5 feet, which is about 4.1 meters. Looking at the Model S, which is 77.3 inches wide (1,964 mm), sitting inside the tunnel we'd say that seems just about right.
Bear in mind this is just a test so, if successful, the final tunnels might be adjusted to different sizes depending on needs. However, since Musk is all about the efficiency of digging, we doubt he'll up the scale significantly.
Google News