Elon Musk's Hyperloop Venture Starts With a Race with Godot

By the Domicyle Staff

By Heisenberg Media (Flickr: Elon Musk - The Summit 2013) CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia

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     The Boring Company and Elon Musk has recently reported that they have started digging their first tunnel and tested an electric sled.  Using his Instagram account, Musk said that the first tunnel will be from LAX to Culver City, Santa Monica, Westwood and Sherman Oaks.  Musk even posited that if everything goes according to plan the sled's speed during testing may reach 200 kilometers per hour.

     Again on Instagram, Musk has showed this electric sled rocketing on a single rail.

     According to Boring's FAQ, if "one adds a "vacuum shell, it is now a Hyperloop Pod which can travel at 600+ miles per hour."

     Since throwing the idea about the hyperloop as the fifth dimension of transportation at the PandoDaily event last 2012, Musk has worked on building the science of this massive project together with his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX.  

     In turn, The Boring Company will be doing the digging, as it vies itself to become the next generation of tunnelers by making it cheaper and faster.  The company said in its FAQ that it plans to  reduce the cost of digging tunnels by digging in smaller diameters of tunnels and increasing the borer's speed.  It's goal "is to defeat a snail in race" according to the website and that's fast for tunnel boring machine (TBM).  

     It's not only Musk who's into the hyperloop.  Now, hyperloop companies like Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies are partnering with cities like Abu Dhabi to study if indeed this mode of transportation is feasible in their own communities.

     The delicious icing on this cake was that the Boring Company has a pet snail and they named it Gary after Spongebob's  snail while the TBM is named Godot after Samuel Beckett's unseen character in his play Waiting for Godot.  

     Finally we get to see the inconspicuous Godot.

First tunnel for The Boring Company begins ... Full length of first tunnel will run from LAX to Culver City, Santa Monica, Westwood and Sherman Oaks. Future tunnels will cover all of greater LA.

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on May 12, 2017 at 5:31am PDT

[Warning, this may cause motion sickness or seizures] This is a test run of our electric sled that would transport cars at 125 mph (200 km/h) through the tunnels, automatically switching from one tunnel to the next. Would mean Westwood to LAX in 5 mins.

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on May 12, 2017 at 5:48am PDT

The race between Gary, our pet snail who lives in a pineapple, and Godot, our tunnel boring machine, begins soon!

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on May 12, 2017 at 5:43am PDT