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Perhaps boring in softer ground the soil could be compressed into the tunnel walls, so nothing needs to be transported away?
I looked on Google Earth to see the area you are describing. I couldn't help noticing that the main SpaceX Building has many solar panels, arrayed so as to form a giant "X" on the roof.View attachment 212417
While looking for any HyperLoop SpaceX event stuff going on, I saw this excavating approximately matching the description of Elon's "digging starts tonight" tweet. Standard equipment at the surface, and then ?
It's between the area I assume is about logical north (actually just north) of Rocket Road and a large canal, north of a parking structure, across street from main SpaceX campus.
Drilling a hole can not be done any faster than modern oil drilling rigs. Oil drilling rigs drill much much faster than boring machines however if one were to use oil drilling technology and scale it up to a boring machine size you might be able to get some serious speed out of it.
What would Elons Oil rig style boring machine entail? Massive amounts of high pressure mud pumping, huge drill bits, and rotation speeds up to 100 rpm. The machine would first drill a relatively small hole and then progressively use larger drill bits to widen the hole and then push a very large metal casing into the newly formed bore. Oil rigs routinely drill holes up to 36" wide, I would assume a walking tunnel would need around a 10 foot diameter. Seems doable.
Yep. Connecting that parking structure to the main building underground seems to be the practical purpose.I looked on Google Earth to see the area you are describing. I couldn't help noticing that the main SpaceX Building has many solar panels, arrayed so as to form a giant "X" on the roof.
I'm not sure this idea hasn't been put into practice outside of view. I'm saying that based on things I heard in 1984.There are alternative technologies out there that would be superior if they worked. High on the list is boring by hydraulic fracturing, melting the rock, forcing it into the fractures and using it as a vitrified tunnel casing. The idea avoids some of the biggest costs associated with removing debris from the tunnel and transporting in casings. This is concept discussed in detail decades ago but as far as I can tell never funded to a real working demo. Kinda like retro propulsive reusable rockets, evacuated tube transport or electric cars it's a bypassed retro tech idea that may be pretty solid in a first principles sense.
I made a quick CAD drawing of what could be the future for Autonomous Cars and Tunnels
View attachment 214369
Charging would happen while you travel through the tube. Also, if you look at the new video just released, the cars dont drive in the tunnel, they are shuttled on what I assume are electric skateboards so I would imagine an automated charge cable would come out and fill you up. Or, the damn things are going 124mph across the city so you wont have much time to charge unless its 350kWh+.
If we don't build the wall, we won't have the types of people inside our country that will support the types of visions Elon has. Sickness will take over our country.Now THAT... THAT is a grand vision infrastructure project. And way more useful than a damned wall.
I saw a track at the bottom for guidance and delivering electricity. The sled probably only needs a few capacitors, power regulator, motors, and tracking steering system.Very cool
This incorporates a lot of other interesting stuff. It uses a Skateboard like Tesla vehicles are working toward being based on. In the original GM Hywire concept and I think in Tesla's intent, all the drivetrain of the vehicle is in the Skateboard which has plugin battery pack and is a plug and play module with any body of the same size. In manufacturing it would just come together with a complete body at the end of the assembly line. The only thing keeping Tesla from this currently is the mechanical linkages of the steering column, which is why I think they are going to eliminate that for full drive by wire as soon as the regulators allow it.