Musk’s ambitious tunnelling project
If it were anyone else, the notion of digging hundreds of kilometres of tunnels to create a new subterranean transportation network under congested cities would seem like pure science fiction.
But the dreamer behind this vision is Elon Musk, the billionaire innovator who has already shown with his Tesla electric cars and SpaceX rockets that he thinks big and doesn’t wait for others to transform fantasy into reality.
Once again, Musk is aiming to shake up an arcane industry not used to outside-the-box thinking and yet potentially ripe for disruption: the underground world of tunnelling.
He could use tunnelling to achieve his moon shot goal of clearing up Los Angeles traffic. It also could be employed to build a “hyperloop” system — a passenger capsule that magnetically levitates inside a tube to achieve high speeds — that would run 360 kilometres from New York to Washington, D.C. in 29 minutes.
Musk hopes to dramatically speed up digging by inventing new tunnel-boring-machine technology that could slash billions from a major project.
Tunnelling is big business. In the U.S. and Canada alone, there are about 60 major tunnel projects in the planning or design phase totalling more than 1.8 million feet, according to the Underground Construction Association of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration.
Although mass-transit proponents, tunnel machine companies and industry experts say the hurdles are enormous, Musk is bringing together the people and machinery to make his vision a reality. The problem: Using existing technology, digging a tunnel from New York to D.C. could take nearly 100 years.
It seems like a challenge tailor-made for Musk who, having moved heavens with his space business, now seeks to move earth.
“Building a tunnel-boring machine is as complicated as building a rocket,” said Gary Brierley, a tunnelling consultant and former president of the American Underground Construction Association whose professional nickname is Doctor Mole. “I hate to say this, but I think rockets are kind of easy compared to tunnels.”
Brierley’s logic? Rockets fly through the air and space, which is fairly predictable in composition. But digging tunnels requires navigating unforeseen rocks, soil, water, contamination and man-made objects. Musk will also need to figure out how to make sure nearby structural foundations are not disturbed.
To get started, Musk has assembled a stealth team of advisers to form The Boring Company and acquired a 14-foot diameter tunnel machine from Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based Super Excavators, USA Today learned. He is using the machine to start digging a pilot hole next to SpaceX’s factory in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, Calif.
Today’s best machines can dig at a rate of about 1/10th of a mile per week, up from a few feet per day several decades ago, said Mike Mooney, director of the Center for Underground Tunnelling and SmartGeo at the Colorado School of Mines. But many machines are slower.
Musk is aiming for a more than tenfold improvement. Current machines top out at a few hundred feet per day, but Mooney speculated that a mile per week is possible. At that rate, the hyperloop tunnel would take just over four years to dig.