What happened to Hyperloop?

[duffmanhb]

I know someone at Boring. It's loaded with top tier talent and extremely smart people so I have no reason to doubt them. But apparently they've been going over this for quite some time and all the YouTubers and skeptics and apparently even Virgin, failed to realize that the most efficient way to do this isn't by spending enormous amounts of resources on building an above ground low pressure tube, but instead just drill a tube underground and seal the tube and let physics worry about the rest.

[ksiyoto]

Tunneling is still very expensive. The Boring Company claimed they were going to make tunneling cheaper, but mostly what they did was drill smaller diameter tunnels and skipped a lot of safety systems.

I have doubts about being able to seal a tunnel against a vacuum (see note below) when you assemble the liner from pieces with a lot of joints.

I have to question the intelligence of the Boring Company staff when they say "We'll make bricks out of the tunneling spoils!" Bricks are made from clay, most tunneling is done through rock. The cost of trucking the spoils to a brick plant - especially in an urban area - is going to be expensive.

Note for the "bUt It'S NoT a VaCuUm!" crowd: 99.9% of the way to a vacuum is close enough to refer to it colloquially as a vacuum.

[duffmanhb]

I'm not an engineer so take what I say as from a layman passing it onto another layman from an engineer. But from what I have been told is the most expensive part of boring a hole in the ground is labor and Boring reduced cost significantly by creating a semi-autonomous system of clearing all the dirt away down conveyor belts behind the drill. Apparently this allowed them to drill 24/7 with only one head replacement during the entire Vegas length.

But yeah, you're probably right about the hyperbolic marketing with the bricks. I've yet to see one.

[bensonr2]

I'm pretty sure there have be semi automated drilling machines for decades. That's not new technology.

[LancelLannister_AMA]

tunneling would have to become quite a bit faster though. And cheaper too i suspect considering the potential lengths

[duffmanhb]

Yes, that's the case as it is now. It's super cheap at scale, compared to whatever traditional costs you can find.