Elon Musk’s, The Boring Co. started working on the horizontal shaft it’s digging to test technologies for a network of underground tunnels to ease Southern California’s traffic distress.
The Tesla founder posted the news on his Twitter and Instagram accounts. Where he said that the first tunnel for The Boring Company begins, Musk said in a photo caption of the tunnel’s entrance in SpaceX’s parking lot along Crenshaw Boulevard.
Musk posted Friday several pictures of equipment meant for digging tunnels beneath Los Angeles. The ambitious project is one of Musk's latest ventures, which was inspired by a desire to alleviate "out of control" traffic in Los Angeles. Musk’s latest venture was inspired by a desire to alleviate out of control traffic in Los Angeles.
The project aims to first dig a tunnel from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, to the nearby Los Angeles airport. Musk frequently flies from Los Angeles to the San Francisco area, where he runs Tesla. Eventually, he envisions a deep, multilayered network of underground tunnels spanning the city.
Speaking at a recent TED talk in Vancouver, British Columbia, Musk discussed the concept in depth. Since the ambitious project started, questions have surfaced about whether he has, or will even be able to obtain, the permits needed to fulfill his vision.
The pictures posted show boring machine segments that are being lowered into the starter tunnel at SpaceX. Musk wants to boost the speed of its rotation by a factor of 10 or more. Another video shows a version of the "skate" that will carry cars through the tunnel at a speed of 125 mph.
The SpaceX founder has been teasing the public about his tunnel-building plans for more than a year. Around the end of April, after obtaining a tunnel-boring machine, Musk described his plans in detail during a TED Talk interview.
Musk wants to ferry vehicles into the underground network on an elevator. The cars would then be deposited onto a 125-mph electric sled.
The result would be 5 mins from Westwood to LAX. Musk said he intends to increase the power of the tunnel-boring machine tenfold. A tweet on May 4 revealed that he couldn’t decide on a name for his tunnel-boring machine. He has since decided on Godot, a reference to a mysterious character that never appears in a Samuel Beckett play called Waiting for Godot.
Engineering documents filed with Hawthorne officials reveal that the experimental tunnel will begin with a large-bore pit that is 20 by 150 feet, with a 13.5-foot diameter. The tunnel will ultimately measure 500 feet long, and remain contained inside SpaceX’s parking lot.
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