Ars takes a first tour of the length of The Boring Company's test tunnel

HAWTHORNE, CA-On A cloudy Tuesday night over the busy street of SpaceX's headquarters, Elon Musk's Boring Company invited a group of journalists to take a tour through the company's first test tunnel. The test tunnel extends 1[ads1].14 miles from SpaceX's former car park, under the Crenshaw Boulevard, under the SpaceX campus, and eventually closes behind some indefinite department stores in Hawthorne, Prairie St. and 102 ^th St.

The the trip was hardly a finished product; Judging the success of The Boring Company's tunnel-digging vision would be impossible at this point. What the day's demonstration did, however, was a proof of the concept.

Entrance to the tunnel

Over the street from SpaceX, journalists laid down a ramp to the original opening of The Boring Companys first tunnel. We entered a modified model X modified because it had bumpers added to the wheels to prevent the vehicle from being too much undesired motion while in the tunnel. Then a driver (as Boring Company employees told us we were not allowed to talk) drove us to the tunnel's mouth, on the raised edges flanking each side of the tunnel walls.

(We were also strictly prohibited from taking pictures or videos, but the accompanying pictures below give you a sense of what we saw).

Through the tunnel

We stopped at the entrance of the tunnel to a string of LED lights along the tunnel's tooth height became green. Then Model X began to roll up, pick up speed to a big … 45 mph. The edges along the side of the tunnel were unfinished and quite bumpy, and the tunnel showed curves at the beginning and at the end it did not seem suitable for the 100+ mph trips Elon Musk has promised in subsequent tunnels. (Musk told reporters later that the unfinished condition of the edges was due to the expiration of the business before the present day).

The bulk of the tunnel's length was painted white with a series of blue LEDs that illuminated the road. When we were quite into the tunnel, it was impossible to see an entrance or exit at each end, which was mildly scary (but I'm not particularly claustrophobic, so it was a feeling that I found myself easy to tear off ). It was also a time for me to notice that the tunnel is extremely narrow. It is of course with design. Part of Muscle's pitch is that if combustion engines are prohibited from operating in the tunnel, robust airflow is not so much of concern, so tunnels may be smaller in diameter. This, theoretically, saves money in boring, debris removal and tunneling materials. (For the specific minds out there, the tunnel is 12 meters in diameter, with a 14 foot outer diameter. The concrete tunnel walls are fabricated to be a foot thick.)

Exit the tunnel

We finally reached a range of tunnels where Green LEDs informed us that we were near the exit. The car left the tunnel on an elevator floor in a narrow mine where we were slowly raised to street level, in a small parking lot next to some residential buildings. The master swung on a bygate and navigated back to the Boring Company media field.

Attempts to "solve traffic"

After our tunnel ride, the conversation of journalists gathered in a room outside the SpaceX lobby for a presentation by Elon Musk and Boring Company President Steve Davis in today's boring condition. Musk, who did most of the conversations, was gentle and joke, and spent a longer time than answering questions after his first presentation.

Many of Musk's material rehashed old pointers: "Everyone wants to go out of 3D structures [buildings] into the 2D system [streets] at the same time," said Musk. The CEO repeated that many layers of tunnels could be built to match the height of the tallest buildings. Tunnels are also immune to bad weather, and more than twenty meters of underground sound is not detectable from the surface. "Israel always tries to discover when Hammas digs tunnels and they can not," Musk offered as evidence.

Musk also added that tunnels were a more sustainable way of incorporating transport to cities. "Unlike highways or railways, you do not share local communities. While I like taking a lot, especially high-speed trains, you can not have anyone living near the train paths."

"And then of course, lairs" Musket's death team, ending its list of reasons for building tunnels. "If you want a good camp, it must be underground." Lair's plural. " When no one laughed, the CEO headed "Dry room here" and triggers some giggles.

But first, Reimagine Boring

Although Musk said many times in the evening that he wanted to "solve traffic," Boring Company's primary goal was to improve the speed and price of tunnel excavation over modern dull machines. At the moment, Musk says that the fastest tunnels are built at a speed of one kilometer every three to six months at a cost of up to $ 1 billion per kilometer in some heavily populated cities. Instead, The Boring Company hopes to improve its speed by automating the creation of concrete tunnel segments so that it is simultaneously boring.

The rest of the improvement in dull speed comes from increasing the power of the boring machine three times while also improving the drill bit to accommodate the extra work. Along with automating segment construction, this should provide a 15-speed improvement in drilling speed, "said Musk.

Musk said that much of the cost reductions would result from speed improvements. "If you have the same crew and that the crew is able to work 15 times faster, you have cut your labor costs," said Musk.

In addition, The Boring Company makes its concrete on site by using dirt excavated from the tunnel itself, which saves at the expense. As mentioned above, the smaller diameter of the Boring Company tunnel also contributes to reducing costs.

Boring Company has long said that the test tunnel in Hawthorne is exploratory in nature and has not incorporated many improvements that Musk believes is possible in dull. Outside the Hawthorne tunnel today, a "highly modified" second generation dull machine, called Line Storm, lay alongside Godot, the unmodified boring machine that the company used to dig the test tunnel. After Line Storm, Musk said, The Boring Company would build its first boring machine from scratch, which will be called Prufrock.

Forget about the electric skate

The Boring Company has long said that a special electric skate would drive vehicles and passengers more than 100 miles per hour through its "Loop" tunnels. But today, Musk said that the only vehicles that would enter the tunnels in the future would be autonomous, electric vehicles with distributable tracking wheels. (The vehicles did not necessarily have to be Tesla cars, says Musk, but they must be autonomous and electrical, and they must have tracking wheels added either in production or with an aftermarket of $ 200 to $ 300.)

For Those without their own autonomous and electric vehicles, the system would have a number of circulating public transport vehicles that riders could order at a station for a small fee. Musk said that a shared ride could run as low as $ 1, but he did not spend too much at the expense or profit of the privately owned Boring Company. The CEO said that The Boring Company would operate its own systems where appropriate or could sell a system to a municipality and let the buyer operate the system.

Musk said towards the end of the night that he had contributed somewhere along the lines of $ 40 million of his private money to The Boring Company, and the construction of Hawthorne test tunnel costs the company around $ 10 million. He estimates that an 18-mile, two-way Loop like the company is contracted to build in Chicago will run somewhere around $ 1 billion, while a less complete system can run under $ 100 million.

The CEO has said The Boring Company is also entertaining offerings from cities to build tunnels for tools and waterlines, which allows municipal services to solve problems in the lines without digging up the street. President Steve Davis noted that The Boring Company is fielding more than five and fewer than 20 inquiries per week from tools that are interested in cheap tunnels for household lines.

In the big order things in the evening tunnel tunnel were a small step for The Boring Company. But Musc's ambitions are, as usual, greater than what currently exists. Musk said the systems he plans to build now are stepping stones to a Baltimore-DC Hyperloop (a Hyperloop is a theoretical system that Musk has described as running at 700 mph, on a levitating, low-pressure track). In response to a journalist's question about Mars, Musk said that his dull equipment could certainly be used to create pressure, underground housing for people on the planet. Although the first test drive through the tunnel felt quite rough, it clearly has a long way to go.

Listed image of The Boring Company