Reinventing Boring.
I have been fascinated by the latent potential for a 10-100x improvement in neglected and formerly unattractive industrial businesses that have stagnated from the lack of a competitive new entrant for decades. Think aerospace and automotive as recent examples. It is a common pattern I’ll be looking for more of in the Future 🙂
“In the United States, there is virtually no investment in tunneling Research and Development (and in many other forms of construction). Thus, the construction industry is one of the only sectors in our economy that has not improved its productivity in the last 50 years.
Currently, tunnels are really expensive to dig, with some projects costing as much as $1 billion per mile.
To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D, which means either flying cars or tunnels. Unlike flying cars, tunnels are weatherproof, out of sight and won’t fall on your head. A large network of tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels). The key to making this work is increasing tunneling speed and dropping costs by a factor of 10 or more – this is the goal of The Boring Company.
Ways to increase Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) speed:
• Increase TBM power. The machine’s power output can be tripled (while coupled with the appropriate upgrades in cooling systems).
• Continuously tunnel. When building a tunnel, current soft-soil machines tunnel for 50% of the time and erect tunnel support structures the other 50%. This is inefficient. Existing technology can be modified to support continuous tunneling activity.
• Automate the TBM. While smaller diameter tunneling machines are automated, larger ones currently require multiple human operators. By automating the larger TBMs, both safety and efficiency are increased.
• Go electric. Current tunnel operations often include diesel locomotives. These can be replaced by electric vehicles.”
— https://www.boringcompany.com/faq/
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