Boring company

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

2 hours ago, YNM said:

... with tunnels 2.7 mi long.

This is absolute LOLs.

That's wise. They make it inside the physical range (iirc 2 km radius ?).
So, they won't have problems with game engine.

Boring on rails.
_{(I hope, everybody knows on rails meaning in KSP?)}

Another evidence that KSP is their development software.

So, shall we get caverns and tunnels now, Squad?
And railways, too.

 

Edited June 15, 2018 by kerbiloid

[mikegarrison]

[YNM]

9 hours ago, tater said:

They want to use the test tunnel, then solicit public input before they commit to making a huge EIR for what will then have to be the cast in stone final product. It's hard to be agile if gov regulation requires a few years worth of paperwork to get permission, that then needs to be entirely redone if literally anything about the design was to change.

But what about groundwater ? Geotechnical ? Existing infrastructures ?

If your "continuous snail pace" TBMs wouldn't slow for archeological finds, people from cultured places are going to be rightly pee'd.

 

Maybe they should go to the deep dessert if they want something entirely not interesting. But doing them inside a city is not that easy.

Edited June 15, 2018 by YNM

[tater]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

If your "continuous snail pace" TBMs wouldn't slow for archeological finds, people from cultured places are going to be rightly pee'd.

There are no archeological sites that deep.

1 hour ago, YNM said:

But what about groundwater ? Geotechnical ? Existing infrastructures ?

They're digging well below those, as well.

[YNM]

2 hours ago, tater said:

There are no archeological sites that deep.

Oh reeeally.

2 hours ago, tater said:

They're digging well below those, as well.

Going below GWL means you're inside groundwater.

 

EDIT : On the plus side, I'm happy they finally got a contract. Waiting for their first legitimate boring bussiness !

Edited June 15, 2018 by YNM

[tater]

39 minutes ago, YNM said:

Oh reeeally.

LA is not London. Any archeology would be for cultures that didn't ever have metallurgy. We're talking pot sherds and projectile point flakes.

39 minutes ago, YNM said:

Going below GWL means you're inside groundwater.

I was mostly referring to existing infrastructure. Water doesn't matter, the tunnels need to be sealed off from water, regardless. (the groundwater level in Hawthorne is already where they are digging, I just DLed the spreadsheet of this for LA, it varies from 6 to 26 m depth in Hawthorne).

[YNM]

10 minutes ago, tater said:

LA is not London.

They know they have these stuff in London - you don't know whether you have any.

Also, if Boring Co. ever move to Europe...

10 minutes ago, tater said:

Water doesn't matter, the tunnels need to be sealed off from water, regardless.

But the lining may react with them.

And not to mention the increased porosity.

This isn't trivial stuff.

Tunnel depth said to vary between 30 ft and 70 ft, with "options to go deeper". That's like saying "it could be a 2 story house or a 4 story flat, with options for skyscrapers".

Edited June 15, 2018 by YNM

[tater]

Archeological mitigation will happen if they find something in tailings. The same would be true now for building foundations. The goal is to tunnel in material as solid as possible, not to dig in soils. There is no US archeology in solid rock that I know of.

yes, the depth doesn’t matter to them past getting a couple tunnel diameters down. It’s not at all the same as your house analogy. A house analogy would be “we’ve designed a prefab house, and you can place it on any dry, flat spot from below sea level (for example: Death Valley) to the highest flat spot on Earth.”

The house doesn’t change if the lot is near a beach, or a few thousand meters above sea level.

[YNM]

42 minutes ago, tater said:

yes, the depth doesn’t matter to them past getting a couple tunnel diameters down.

You have different conditions at different depths.

Unless, the US is a whole big, boring, uniform cheesecake.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

They know they have these stuff in London - you don't know whether you have any.

Also, if Boring Co. ever move to Europe...

London is an city dating back to roman time or earlier. You tend to build on top of ruins so you can get very deep archaeological finds. Think its down to 40 meter at Troy. 
This is not an major issue in the US. 

[YNM]

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

This is not an major issue in the US. 

 

7 hours ago, YNM said:

Also, if Boring Co. ever move to Europe...

Just saying.

[Wjolcz]

What's the problem here? If they find something of historical/archeological significance then they will simply not dig there. Or the government of the country/state simply won't care and they will dig right through it. And then people will be unhappy. Not a new thing.

9 hours ago, YNM said:

Going below GWL means you're inside groundwater.

Gee, I wonder how my city got it's underground/metro/whatever-you-call-it railway system and it didn't get flooded even though it goes right below A FREAKING RIVER. Must be magic.

It's not impossible. Sure, there are many difficulties, but drilling tunnels is not impossible.

Edited June 15, 2018 by Wjolcz

[YNM]

44 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

Gee, I wonder how my city got it's underground/metro/whatever-you-call-it railway system and it didn't get flooded even though it goes right below A FREAKING RIVER. Must be magic.

It's not impossible. Sure, there are many difficulties, but drilling tunnels is not impossible.

They even made a floating tunnel.

But this isn't my point. My point is environmental impact. Pouring concrete into water can lead to consequences. What that consequence is... I don't know. Until you try find it out.

Alright, yes, LA is probably just a really thick layer of sand. Never a thing down there. But my largest concern is the "handwaving" action being done. What if they get contracts in more complicated places ? Would they handwave it ?

[Brotoro]

9 minutes ago, YNM said:

What if they get contracts in more complicated places ? Would they handwave it ?

People in complicated areas that have special requirements should write appropriate contracts.

[YNM]

16 minutes ago, Brotoro said:

People in complicated areas that have special requirements should write appropriate contracts.

And this is why I'm happy that they got their first legitimate commercial contract. I hope they can truly prove themself they're well intended and cares of their surrounding.

Case in point for groundwater impact - not exactly in a city, in fact it's in an area of oustanding national beauty - but sometimes you just have to do it.

Fingers cross for a succesful Boring Co.

Edited June 16, 2018 by YNM

[tater]

Looks like near the airport or Marina Del Rey, they'd want to check tailings above maybe 9m below the surface. I just scanned the archeological report from the Ballona Wetlands (most LA archeology is there), and there is the odd charcoal deposit at that depth (unsure if it is natural due to ancient wildfires, or proof of human settlement). All the real sites need to be far more shallow, which makes sense, since otherwise discovery is random core samples or excavations related to construction (which is what this would be).

I'm not overly concerned about this as a risk, there are extant mechanisms to deal with mitigating those impacts, and minus such drilling, those sites would be lost anyway, no one is ever going to see them under LA unless a tunnel is dug.

No one is suggesting they should not do an environmental impact report. Their point is that they don't want to go to the trouble for a short test tunnel that may not look like the final product (which would then require an entirely different, new EIR). Ie: if the public really wants more emergency access points (say stairs every few hundred meters because they are afraid of being under ground), then the EIR has to include extra verticals with that spacing.

[tater]

 

Edited July 13, 2018 by tater

[cubinator]

Yay bricks!

[tater]

6 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Yay bricks!

I know, right? Pretty cool. Makes me ant to build something.

[Wjolcz]

LEGO!

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

Will now the boring get diving?

Will they make a water pipe with mini-capsules?

 

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

So they confirmed that the bricks were made out of tunnel mud:

And now they have colored tunnels:

Seems slightly pointless, but exactly the kind of fun and silly idea that makes me love Elon Musk projects.

[cubinator]

28 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

So they confirmed that the bricks were made out of tunnel mud:

And now they have colored tunnels:

Seems slightly pointless, but exactly the kind of fun and silly idea that makes me love Elon Musk projects.

After boring a tunnel with what is designed to be the most advanced machine on the planet for the purpose, lining it with a remote-controlled RGBLED strip would be a piece of cake. No reason not to make a simple light show for passengers to enjoy. In fact, this sort of lighting is probably less epilepsy inducing than the florescent lights from before due to being continuous. Much easier on the eyes.

Edited July 16, 2018 by cubinator

[Tullius]

1 hour ago, cubinator said:

After boring a tunnel with what is designed to be the most advanced machine on the planet for the purpose, lining it with a remote-controlled RGBLED strip would be a piece of cake. No reason not to make a simple light show for passengers to enjoy. In fact, this sort of lighting is probably less epilepsy inducing than the florescent lights from before due to being continuous. Much easier on the eyes.

It's off-the-shelf hardware: https://www.lumilum.com/collections/120v-rgb-led-strip-light-dmx-controllable-b34xt-series So, if you want your own Boring company light show at home...

[Norcalplanner]

On 6/14/2018 at 7:19 PM, tater said:

Anyone who listened to the long talk about the Boring Company that Elon gave knows why they want the exemption. They want to use the test tunnel, then solicit public input before they commit to making a huge EIR for what will then have to be the cast in stone final product. It's hard to be agile if gov regulation requires a few years worth of paperwork to get permission, that then needs to be entirely redone if literally anything about the design was to change.

Measure twice, cut once.

I understand and agree with the sentiment behind them requesting a 15332 infill exemption. But as a CEQA practitioner, they appear to be on very thin ice, seeing as how the unusual circumstances clause in 15300 can be used to invalidate the exemption. And given CEQA's extremely broad standing criteria, just about anyone can file suit to stop the project.

A master programmatic EIR with focused EIRs for each segment in turn would appear to be the way to go.  Either that, or build the thing in another state.

Edited July 16, 2018 by Norcalplanner
Typo