The Boring Company’s tiny Las Vegas Loop is all that’s come of Musk’s promises to build superfast mass-transit “hyperloops.” Workers say its tunnels are packed with chemical sludge.
The [tunnel’s] accelerants cure the grout that seals the tunnel’s concrete supports, helping the grout set properly and protecting the work against cracks and other deterioration. They also seriously burn exposed human skin. At the Encore dig site, such burns became almost routine, workers there told Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. An investigation by the state OSHA, which Bloomberg Businessweek has obtained via a freedom of information request, describes workers being scarred permanently on their arms and legs. According to the investigation, at least one employee took a direct hit to the face. In an interview with Businessweek, one of the tunnel workers recalls the feeling of exposure to the chemicals: “You’d be like, ‘Why am I on fire?’”
I mean no shit this tube wouldn’t even be allowed for strictly automated transport of goods in Europe. And USA lets cars with people inside drive that deathtrap.
technofetishism–if there’s anything local politicians love it’s sounding hip and getting Cool Headlines over boring but practical technology that actually works
Some of our politicians in Germany love the idea of flying taxis and monorails but “luckily” they don’t like actually spending money on infrastructure so instead they opt to do nothing at all.
I think that’s where the Hyperloop fits in: on Earth, it isn’t practical to keep the required level of vacuum, but it would be quite easy on Mars. At the same time, they need to perfect the tunnel digging process, and cars are the excuse to do it on Earth.
Kind of ironic that video has an ad for a “mental hygiene” app… when a good first step would be not watching that sort of videos… but let’s go point by point:
Logistics: that’s SpaceX. Starship is planned to carry up to 100 people at once. As for trip duration, think XV century ships on multi-month long trips: tough, but survivable. Will need unmanned supply trips, but as it says, some could fail, just send more. Manned trips… if they’re full of volunteers, some could fail too (plenty more where those came from).
Justification: because. Same as always: adventure, fame, science. Probably no raping indigenous population and robbing them of gold, but still. People get into F1 cars, skydive, free climb, etc. Some die, that doesn’t stop the next ones.
Living on Mars: yes, probably in underground habitats. Definitely not “just the 1%”, the plan is to have indentured labor, so everyone has a chance! (to be a slave, but on Mars) Premature death… see previous point.
Psychological effects: with a few hundred people, same as in any small society. Not everyone needs to be surrounded by billions of people 24/7.
Terraforming: red herring. Musk doesn’t have plans for that, so less BS.
Alternatives: night on Antarctica is 4320 hours, on the Moon it’s 336 hours, night on Mars is 12 hours and 18 minutes. See the difference?
Mars One: red herring. Not a Musk project, scammy from the beginning. That’s two totally BS points.
What absurd opening logic. The first person is a rocket engineer. He doesn’t just play Kerbel Space, he designs rockets.
The schematics for Starship allows for at best 15-20 people. Supplies are a thing. The ability for humans to travel & survive for this distance is not established at all, nor is the ability to build structures, grow food, supply air & water, etc
Psychological effects: with a few hundred people, same as in any small society.
This confident nonsense is like discussing reality with an Iraq War Cheerleader Circa 2004-2007 .
There’s no plan. To get to the Moon, Starship itself requires ~-15 refueling launches using a method that doesn’t exist, despite the taxpayers giving the company 300+ million dollars to develop it.
Wow! You really believe all the lies Musk says? This is the same guy who has been promising ‘full software driving’ next year for nearly a decade, fantasizing about downloading human memory engrams, insisting that hyperloop is ‘not so hard’ and says things like ‘I know more about manufacturing than anyone else alive’.
How much knowledge does it take to realize that 100 people per starship is simply impossible? There simply isn’t enough room. And read your statement about underground dwellings and sunlight times together to see how they’re incompatible. Musk isn’t saying all these because he’s a dreaming visionary. He’s saying these to trick other rich people into giving him more money. It has the same vibes as the monorail song.
Buzzwords sell. It’s the same shit in corporate America when they went bonkers for blockchain a few years ago, only to have all that money thrown into “research” flushed down the toilet. Like gee that money should have gone into a higher corporate tax payout versus a fancy headline for shareholders.
Same thing here, but with politicians wanting something buzzy for their next election.
Man, I keep getting this incredibly Mandela-effect like feeling that this entire Vegas tunnel project was something I made up.
Glad to see news that it wasn’t. The idea is just so colossally and obviously stupid compared to actual transit investment that it really FEELS like something a lefty type would’ve made up as a hypothetical to illuminate the kind of idiotic shit happens in American urban planning.
Well, I’ve heard the theory that Musk made this project up, because the city wanted to build like a proper subway or something. He didn’t need this ridiculous tunnel to actually work. He just needed to derail (pun intended) the sensible infrastructure project, so he could sell more shoddy cars.
You think he would develop and build a whole tunnel boring machine and dig through Vegas just to sell a handful more cars? It’s not like the people potentially buying Teslas in the US would even consider going for a subway instead. If anything those people might use the subway in addition to driving a Tesla.
Yup, he did the same with Cali HSR. Even most current day negative statements about it are just parroted about things he said years ago. “It’s too expensive”, “it is going over it’s timelines”, “no one will use it”.
Which, newsflash to people saying that, all major infrastructure projects have that said about them. Look at the Chunnel now, or most suspension bridges and tunnels in the US. They always go over budget, they are always delayed, only some people think they’re useful, but after they’re built people think “how did we ever live without this?”
Facts are that Elon owns a car company, so he’ll say anything negative about any project that isn’t going to put more cars on the road. HSR, Vegas subways, BART, he just wants us to buy more Tesla’s at the expense of our own convenience and deserved infrastructure
I thought this whole project was just one massive safety violation? Even just one person getting a heart attack in there and you’ve got a problem, because emergency services literally cannot get in there, when there’s other cars in the tunnel. A single fire and that tunnel is filled with smoke.
We didn’t start building tunnels in a decent size and with energency exits, because we were all dumbasses. It didn’t take the ‘genius’ of an Elon Musk to recognize that we could just hack a tiny hole into the wall. The guy is just able to build a death trap, because apparently laws are optional and human lives expendable, if you’ve just got the money.
I wasn’t overly familiar with this project, but now that I’ve read up on it… what in the actual fuck? You could offer me the entirety of Elon Musk’s hoard wealth and it would still not be enough to convince me to step foot in that claustophobic death trap.
The thing that really strikes me is that there seems to be very little difference between Musk going “I know how to build transport tunnels better than any of the countless engineers who have built them before!” and that Titan submarine guy going “I know how to build deep sea submersibles better than any of the countless engineers who have built them before!” And it seems likely that Musk’s death trap will have a similar ending, only Musk won’t be inside it at the time. Techbros seem incredibly unwilling to consider that there are often reasons why things are built the way they are.
He thinks he knows how to build a colony on Mars better than anyone. He hasn’t considered that maybe there are good reasons why it hasn’t been done yet. His first colony will be a death trap.
He’s planning it mostly as a one-way trip, sort of a “live the rest of your life taming the wilderness” pitch. It isn’t all that different from the colonizing that went on Earth, and even the casualties might not be much higher.
That’s a feature, not a bug. His family got rich with mines in south africa, exploiting the locals. For getting more rich by mining mars you’ll have to bring your own locals to exploit, and there’s no need to make it to comfortable for them.
Neurolink was an existing company, it’s founder quit in shame after they faked/stole existing research. His own professor, the leading expert in the field, declared it all bunk with the metaphor “Elon Musk couldn’t find a brain of he tried”.
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I often wonder why I am on fire.
AdamSomething is enjoying this car wreck.
https://youtu.be/p8NiM_p8n5A?si=nVms790OZpkeZ81-
I mean no shit this tube wouldn’t even be allowed for strictly automated transport of goods in Europe. And USA lets cars with people inside drive that deathtrap.
I was honestly a bit shocked when I first saw videos of it.
It’s so narrow, it looks like you can’t even open the car doors properly and that in a tunnel filled with lithium gas bombs.
You can’t open the doors at all… And regardless of what kind of car it is, every car can burn or explode.
Yes, but other cars aren’t operating inside enclosed tunnels at all times.
I still don’t understand why this was a better idea than a train.
technofetishism–if there’s anything local politicians love it’s sounding hip and getting Cool Headlines over boring but practical technology that actually works
Some of our politicians in Germany love the idea of flying taxis and monorails but “luckily” they don’t like actually spending money on infrastructure so instead they opt to do nothing at all.
Trains wouldn’t work on Mars (surface), too dusty.
I thought Las Vegas was on Earth, but I could be wrong as I haven’t been there (to Las Vegas I mean, I’ve been to Earth).
Anyway, if you’re already building a tunnel, you might as well put a train in it, even on Mars.
I think that’s where the Hyperloop fits in: on Earth, it isn’t practical to keep the required level of vacuum, but it would be quite easy on Mars. At the same time, they need to perfect the tunnel digging process, and cars are the excuse to do it on Earth.
No one is colonizing anything.
https://youtu.be/U9YdnzOf4NQ?si=QxA_La0J6UVEiMZv
Kind of ironic that video has an ad for a “mental hygiene” app… when a good first step would be not watching that sort of videos… but let’s go point by point:
Terraforming: red herring. Musk doesn’t have plans for that, so less BS.Mars One: red herring. Not a Musk project, scammy from the beginning. That’s two totally BS points.It’s a risky plan, but still a plan.
What absurd opening logic. The first person is a rocket engineer. He doesn’t just play Kerbel Space, he designs rockets.
The schematics for Starship allows for at best 15-20 people. Supplies are a thing. The ability for humans to travel & survive for this distance is not established at all, nor is the ability to build structures, grow food, supply air & water, etc
This confident nonsense is like discussing reality with an Iraq War Cheerleader Circa 2004-2007 .
There’s no plan. To get to the Moon, Starship itself requires ~-15 refueling launches using a method that doesn’t exist, despite the taxpayers giving the company 300+ million dollars to develop it.
Wow! You really believe all the lies Musk says? This is the same guy who has been promising ‘full software driving’ next year for nearly a decade, fantasizing about downloading human memory engrams, insisting that hyperloop is ‘not so hard’ and says things like ‘I know more about manufacturing than anyone else alive’.
How much knowledge does it take to realize that 100 people per starship is simply impossible? There simply isn’t enough room. And read your statement about underground dwellings and sunlight times together to see how they’re incompatible. Musk isn’t saying all these because he’s a dreaming visionary. He’s saying these to trick other rich people into giving him more money. It has the same vibes as the monorail song.
Buzzwords sell. It’s the same shit in corporate America when they went bonkers for blockchain a few years ago, only to have all that money thrown into “research” flushed down the toilet. Like gee that money should have gone into a higher corporate tax payout versus a fancy headline for shareholders.
Same thing here, but with politicians wanting something buzzy for their next election.
“Move fast and break things”… and by “things”, they mean people.
Hey cut Musk some slack, average people aren’t actually people
Yeah, average people are human… resources. (jk, but not really)
Man, I keep getting this incredibly Mandela-effect like feeling that this entire Vegas tunnel project was something I made up.
Glad to see news that it wasn’t. The idea is just so colossally and obviously stupid compared to actual transit investment that it really FEELS like something a lefty type would’ve made up as a hypothetical to illuminate the kind of idiotic shit happens in American urban planning.
Well, I’ve heard the theory that Musk made this project up, because the city wanted to build like a proper subway or something. He didn’t need this ridiculous tunnel to actually work. He just needed to derail (pun intended) the sensible infrastructure project, so he could sell more shoddy cars.
You think he would develop and build a whole tunnel boring machine and dig through Vegas just to sell a handful more cars? It’s not like the people potentially buying Teslas in the US would even consider going for a subway instead. If anything those people might use the subway in addition to driving a Tesla.
I mean, why not? If he’s getting publicly funded to build a useless tunnel, he might as well build a useless tunnel. Or rather delegate it, of course.
Opposition to sane transit is real and Musk admitted this.
Yup, he did the same with Cali HSR. Even most current day negative statements about it are just parroted about things he said years ago. “It’s too expensive”, “it is going over it’s timelines”, “no one will use it”.
Which, newsflash to people saying that, all major infrastructure projects have that said about them. Look at the Chunnel now, or most suspension bridges and tunnels in the US. They always go over budget, they are always delayed, only some people think they’re useful, but after they’re built people think “how did we ever live without this?”
Facts are that Elon owns a car company, so he’ll say anything negative about any project that isn’t going to put more cars on the road. HSR, Vegas subways, BART, he just wants us to buy more Tesla’s at the expense of our own convenience and deserved infrastructure
I thought this whole project was just one massive safety violation? Even just one person getting a heart attack in there and you’ve got a problem, because emergency services literally cannot get in there, when there’s other cars in the tunnel. A single fire and that tunnel is filled with smoke.
We didn’t start building tunnels in a decent size and with energency exits, because we were all dumbasses. It didn’t take the ‘genius’ of an Elon Musk to recognize that we could just hack a tiny hole into the wall. The guy is just able to build a death trap, because apparently laws are optional and human lives expendable, if you’ve just got the money.
Quelle surprise.
I wasn’t overly familiar with this project, but now that I’ve read up on it… what in the actual fuck? You could offer me the entirety of Elon Musk’s
hoardwealth and it would still not be enough to convince me to step foot in that claustophobic death trap.The thing that really strikes me is that there seems to be very little difference between Musk going “I know how to build transport tunnels better than any of the countless engineers who have built them before!” and that Titan submarine guy going “I know how to build deep sea submersibles better than any of the countless engineers who have built them before!” And it seems likely that Musk’s death trap will have a similar ending, only Musk won’t be inside it at the time. Techbros seem incredibly unwilling to consider that there are often reasons why things are built the way they are.
You have to look at the bigger picture: Musk’s “I know how to build a colony on Mars better than anyone!”
That requires:
indentured labourvolunteers willing to work for the privilege (tons of applicants already)There are some other details missing, and maybe there are other projects I’m not aware of, but the general plan is pretty clear.
He thinks he knows how to build a colony on Mars better than anyone. He hasn’t considered that maybe there are good reasons why it hasn’t been done yet. His first colony will be a death trap.
He’s planning it mostly as a one-way trip, sort of a “live the rest of your life taming the wilderness” pitch. It isn’t all that different from the colonizing that went on Earth, and even the casualties might not be much higher.
That’s a feature, not a bug. His family got rich with mines in south africa, exploiting the locals. For getting more rich by mining mars you’ll have to bring your own locals to exploit, and there’s no need to make it to comfortable for them.
If he’s living in it as well, it could just as easily become a death trap for him.
Solar Roof
Good point, although I think they’re planning something nuclear powered, like for the Moon.
Imagine the roaming costs on Mars… one liners is all most will be able to aff [message too long]
A rocket is just a truck. A fleet of trucks don’t build or make possible whatever we dream them to carry.
A giant truck doesn’t meet all demands. Starlink is just the Internet and does not count towards the existing, now saturated “market”.
https://youtu.be/Om90htezXLk?si=cPV3vVKVIlkKB5T1
https://youtu.be/kM0gD4-zTT8?si=t1-QPOKuQ2CSzRw5
https://youtu.be/FNt_SyJjNGw?si=SnpUnW_CZK93ZBl1 (Parts 1 & 2, etc are also sanity.)
Neurolink was an existing company, it’s founder quit in shame after they faked/stole existing research. His own professor, the leading expert in the field, declared it all bunk with the metaphor “Elon Musk couldn’t find a brain of he tried”.
https://youtu.be/p8NiM_p8n5A?si=bCtDVkLL546je8rV
Musk is a sociopath hijacking reality so real issues are ignored.
How would people on Mars even claim their rights? I never heard a country recognize their own jurisdiction on Mars.
If Musk enslaves these people, not return them to earth, etc., how can they stop that from Mars?
It did it’s job of shutting down public transit projects
You understand Elon Musk better than most of Journalism.
“Why was commmunism so blind to it’s flaws?” Have you paid attention to our society & capitalism lately?