To say Elon Musk is a busy guy is an
understatement between running SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink, he apparently plans his day
in five-minute slots. Time is precious. So one day in 2016 while sitting in another LA traffic
jam, he had enough and tweeted he was going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start
digging. In case anyone thought he was kidding he followed up with: I'm actually going to do
this. It wasn't a spur of the moment decision to found The Boring Company. Musk had been thinking
about it for a while. Traffic is soul-destroying. It's like acid on the soul, it's horrible. And
his solution might just end traffic for good When Boring built its test tunnel leaving the
parking lot of SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, the aim was to find a better
way for private vehicles to get around. But the plans have now expanded into a
public transportation system called the Loop, where those who don't own cars can
hop on a vehicle cycling through. The first Loop will be in Las Vegas built for
the massive convention center which hosts the Consumer Electronics Show every January. A walk
from one end to another normally takes 15 minutes. That's now turned into a one-minute ride.
Visitors will be packed into a Model X, Model 3, or a modified Tesla that can fit up
to 16 people. This is an earlier prototype. The vehicles will be zipping through the
tunnels at up to 155 mph, initially with a driver and eventually autonomously. An electric
skate was supposed to help center the car. That was axed in favor of retractable wheels but
both ideas have been abandoned and instead, the vehicle will rely on its own tires driving
through a paved tunnel. The convention center Loop could be the beginning of a bigger Vegas
network stretching all the way down the Strip, potentially one day connecting to Los Angeles if
the website is any indication. In LA, there's a proposal to take fans to and from Dodger Stadium
so instead of sitting in traffic for an hour, the Dugout Loop as it's called would only be a
four-minute ride and cost a dollar each way. I mean wouldn't it be incredible if you could travel
around LA, New York, DC, Chicago, Paris, London, anywhere at 150 miles an hour? Expanding to major
cities around the world will only be possible by bringing down costs - the same strategy must
apply to the rocket business. The final liftoff of Atlantis. Space shuttle launches used to
be really expensive - $450 million per mission Then SpaceX came along and dropped it down to
$62 million for a Falcon 9 flight largely because it's able to re-use parts of the rocket. In the
same way, building tunnels is very expensive. Los Angeles' purple line subway extension has a
price tag of more than a billion dollars a mile yet the one-mile demo tunnel only costs $10
million because The Boring Company applied the principle of reusability responsible for SpaceX's
success. Typically, the excavated dirt is thrown away and the process of taking it off-site is very
costly. Instead, the dirt will be used to help build the tunnel's reinforcing segments on-site
and any leftovers will be turned into bricks to be sold, paying for the dirt removal itself or given
away for free for affordable housing projects. Another way to cut costs is by building smaller
tunnels. The standard size for a single lane is 28 feet in diameter. Boring's will only be
12 feet which doesn't leave a lot of room, so although technically any electric vehicle
with autonomous capabilities will be able to use them in the future, they'll have to fit. Smaller
tunnels also make building faster. Tunneling today is slower than a snail. This is our goal: we must
be faster than a snail. They plan on beating Gary the company's pet snail by bringing a different
approach to drilling. Usually, a tunnel boring machine or TBM drill, then stops, as the segments
are installed. The Boring Company wants to do both at the same time and with a more powerful machine.
A standard TBM can dig one mile in eight to 12 weeks whereas Boring's third-generation TBM, the
custom-designed Prufrock, is meant to go more than a mile a week. And if it moves that quickly, the
system could rival subways or in Musk's words, "crush" subways. While a train has to stop at
every station, Loop passengers would travel directly to their destination, skipping all the
other stops. And unlike a subway, there isn't a limit to the number of stations. They can be
as discreet as a couple of parking spaces. It would also be as much as nine times the speed
of a train. If you find it uncomfortable it will be hard to handle what comes next because the
Loop is a stepping stone toward the Hyperloop. The Hyperloop is meant for city-to-city
transport at more than 600 miles an hour. We're talking airplane speeds. So passengers
and cargo will be in a pressurized pod. It could either connect to the Loop or fit within the Loop
tunnels. For the past few years, SpaceX has held a competition for students and non-students to build
sub-scale prototypes. Although this technology may captivate minds, there are questions about
how safe a Loop or Hyperloop would be. The proposed 35-mile DC to Baltimore route has been
criticized for not having enough emergency exits. The plan is to construct up to 70 ventilation
shafts serving as exits that would be spaced as far as two miles apart. Boring notes the Loop
is designed to be the fastest and safest system ever and says it will comply with safety and fire
protection standards. Still, some engineers are skeptical this will succeed on a large scale.
But the same was said of SpaceX when it began. And many thought Tesla would never learn the art
of mass production. If Musk is known for anything, it's beating the odds with engineering feats.
Finally, finally, finally there's something. Something that I think could
solve the goddamn traffic problem. The future should be anything but boring.
Hey guys, I appreciate you watching, I'm Cindy Pom. So do you think Boring company
tunnels will come to cities around the world and would you use them? Let me know your thoughts,
you can leave them in the comment section below. If you like what you saw, give it a like,
and don't forget to subscribe to my channel. A big shout out, as always, goes out to all my
Patrons. Thank you so much for your support, including my Patreon Producer Nino
Gjoni. I will see you all very soon.
