Why The Boring Company Is The Key To Elon's Mars Colony!

okay so we all know the official story about elon musk inventing the boring company while stuck in california traffic and deciding he was going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging it's a good story it's relatable memorable kind of funny almost like the perfect cover story for developing a secret technology hidden in plain sight what if i told you that the real reason that elon musk started the boring company was to develop a next generation tunnel boring machine to deploy on the planet mars and construct his own underground martian city okay fair enough it's not exactly an earth-shattering revelation or even a significant stretch of the imagination most people would probably assume that elon is going to try and launch one of these boring machines into space at some point it makes sense but still this remains a subject that doesn't get much airtime as a serious discussion and that's a shame because it is really fun to imagine the future connection between what is happening right here on earth under the streets of las vegas with what could someday become the first human settlement on an extraterrestrial world so let's talk about boring tunnels on mars we can start off with the reason why we would even want to dig tunnels on mars in the first place because we are all going to live under awesome sci-fi bubble domes right well not so much that looks great in renderings but when it comes to practicality the giant domes are by far the worst idea the reality of life on mars will require significant protection from the elements that means radiation micrometeorites atmospheric exposure and dust storms what's going to happen to that giant dome the first time that an 8 kilometer high cloud of electrostatic dust rolls through who's going to clean it radiation is going to be a big concern for long-term settlements on mars exposure to radiation from the sun is about 40 to 50 times greater on the surface of mars compared to the surface of earth this is because mars has no active molten core and therefore no magnetosphere to repel cosmic rays and solar winds mars doesn't have much of an atmosphere at all really and that same lack of an atmosphere leaves us more vulnerable to meteors while we are staying on the red planet earth has a very dense atmosphere so when meteorites hit it at a speed of up to 72 kilometers per second the intense heat generated by friction causes the rock to burn up long before it reaches the ground and even if something does get through it's going to end up a lot smaller on impact than it was out in space the atmospheric pressure on mars is less than one percent of ours on earth so that meteorite is still going to be moving at pretty close to 72 kilometers per second when it hits our dome that won't end well and exposure to this low pressure environment is going to be an even bigger problem for the human body if there were to be a breach in the habitat and a depressurization then our blood would boil and our eyeballs would explode total recall got that one right so going underground would be a great way to solve some of the biggest challenges that the planet throws at us and elon musk knows this very well there's a clip of elon answering questions at a conference back in 2017 and when asked about how the tunnel boring idea would relate to his mars colony plans elon said this i do think getting good at digging tunnels could be really helpful for mars building underground habitats with good radiation shielding you could build a whole city underground if you wanted to people would still want to go outside from time to time but you can build a tremendous amount underground with the right boring technology on mars i do think there is a lot of overlap in that area end quote elon also theorized that even though there would be a significant technological overlap there would need to be a different optimization for a mars boring machine versus an earth-boring machine and he said that he expects there will be a lot of ice mining happening on mars and in general a lot of mining activity that these boring machines could be used for we're pretty sure that the surface of mars is going to be rich in metals like copper chromium iron and nickel which will be vital for what's called in-situ resources which means using what's available on the planet to support the colony mining water is going to be a huge part of this it's very likely that there is a large amount of ice frozen on the surface of mars it's not going to be like the movie total recall where they imagine that the entire core of mars is made of ice but there should be plenty to support a small colony there now let's start connecting some dots here in 2016 the same year that the boring company was conceived spacex released their first illustrations for an interplanetary transport system this would go on to become the starship so we know that elon was very much in the headspace of landing on mars in this particular year the very first boring company tunnel ever created was underneath the spacex headquarters in hawthorne california and just recently elon announced that he is working on a third edition of his master plan that will present a unified vision of his three companies tesla spacex and the boring company if that's not enough take a look at this the diameter of a proof rock boring machine is 8 meters the diameter of a cargo fairing on the spacex starship is 9 meters they would fit together like a glove almost like it was done on purpose and unleashing one of these beasts on mars would give us the ability to tunnel at a near snail-like pace of 17 meters per hour we'd have a subterranean city in no time boring transit tunnels under the surface of mars would allow for easy ultra high speed hyperloop systems because to build a hyperloop on earth we have to create an artificial vacuum inside the tube to factor out wind resistance but the atmosphere on mars is already in a near vacuum state so by simply allowing the ambient pressure into the loop a vehicle could move through it at incredible speeds with virtually zero resistance we could even bore a gigantic circular tunnel with a mobile habitat inside that would be in constant motion like a centrifuge and that would create an artificial gravity effect simulating the conditions on earth time spent inside the centrifuge would help us to mitigate the weakening effects of low martian gravity now of course there is one giant thorn in the side of that theory and that is weight so a starship can lift at least 100 metric tons of cargo to the surface of mars which is spectacular some research shows that the weight of the proofrock boring machine is going to be about 1200 metric tons so that doesn't add up in reality it would take 12 spaceships to carry one boring machine which would not be impossible if elon actually manages to build his fleet of 1000 starships but it's also not as streamlined as we'd like to imagine as much as i love the theory we do have to keep it real and debunk that idea just a little bit okay now what if i told you we don't even need boring machines on mars because it is already full of natural tunnels this is kind of mind-blowing but it turns out the planet itself has already done a lot of the hard work for us the surface of mars is full of rock formations called lava tubes these are leftovers from ancient times when mars was volcanically active just like the earth at some point over the past 4 billion years our two planets probably looked very similar to each other living bodies with active molten cores of rock and metal the giant mountain olympus mons on the surface of mars is the tallest known mountain in the solar system more than two and a half times the height of everest that is the remnant of a martian volcano but mars started to cool down much faster than the earth maybe because it's smaller maybe because it's further away from the sun but the core of mars solidified the magnetic field dissipated and the atmosphere was blown away by the solar wind but left behind were these gigantic tunnels cut into the surface rock by the ancient lava flows we know that these tubes exist on mars because we have observed the skylights in the tunnel ceilings in our satellite flybys these are points where the roof of the lava tube caves in leaving a perfectly round hole in the surface that reveals the hollow cavern underneath we have spotted tons of these skylights on mars they're on the moon too and that tells us there is already a network of tunnels just waiting to be found because of the low gravity on mars these lava tubes will be significantly wider than the ones that we see form on the earth they could be hundreds of meters across and kilometers in length the roofs of these tunnels could be as much as 90 meters thick providing more than enough shielding against radiation meteorites and anything else the solar system can throw at us the insulating effect of these cave tunnels should maintain a consistent temperature of around negative 20 degrees celsius and because we believe that the rock that makes up the outer surface of mars will be non-porous in nature we should at some point be able to create a pressurized artificial atmosphere within the caves so it would be chilly but we could breathe outside of a helmet and our eyes wouldn't explode and on top of all that the insides of these tubes could very well be the place where we find the remains of past life on mars maybe all of the evidence has been blasted away from the surface or buried under hundreds of millions of years of dust storms but under the ground could be the preserved fossils of microorganisms or even fish or reptiles or animals maybe there was a civilization of some kind of mammal living on mars when the planet began to die and they retreated under the ground for a last-ditch effort at survival we could find some freaky stuff down there now i know what you might be thinking does this rule out the whole boring company in space idea entirely no it still would be awesome and extremely useful to have tunnel boring machines running on mars maybe we can use the natural tubes as primarily settlements and main arteries of our infrastructure and we interconnect them with our own sub network of tunnels and hyperloops taking all factors into consideration that's probably the best case scenario for a martian city underground hubs with their own transit system tying it all together we use the caves as home and we treat the surface like a utility a place to harness solar energy to build greenhouses and grow food a place for exploration and adventure maybe think of it like a coastal city on earth we live on the land and we work on the water except the land is a cave and the water is the surface of an alien world it's amazing that we're alive at a point in human history where we can even talk about things like this in any realistic sense the fact that this stuff is even remotely possible is mind-blowing so let us know your theories below how do we realize elon musk's vision for a self-sustaining human society on mars and do you think the boring company could be the key to it all don't forget to give this video a thumbs up today if you liked it that is so important for getting our content out to more people if you enjoy the content then you'd probably also enjoy our weekly newsletter so sign up the link down below at the teslaspace.com a huge thank you to all of our patreon supporters who are listed on the screen now you help us make the best content we can and we really appreciate it thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: The Tesla Space

Views: 313,483

Keywords: tesla, elon musk, elon musk mars, elon musk mars plan, elon musk mars mission, elon musk mars interview, spacex mars, spacex mars mission, spacex mars plan, spacex mars landing, spacex mars rocket, spacex mars mission update, spacex elon musk, elon musk spacex, elon musk spacex launch, elon musk spacex mars, elon musk mars mission update, spacex mars colony, spacex mars colony plans, boring company spacex, spacex boring company, mars colony, mars colonization

Id: cWDI_PgKyoQ

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 27 2022