The future always promises to be a great many things — greener, cleaner, faster, brighter, infinitely more connected, and of course… boring? That’s the idea according to the man who literally has a master plan, Elon Musk. Musk’s Boring Company, which began in the mind of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO while he was sitting in L.A. traffic, has released a video demonstrating what is presumably its ultimate goal: to make cities’ traffic grids 3D.
Electrek originally reported that a boring machine had been spotted at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, with the conspicuous label, The Boring Company. Electrek speculates that this particular boring machine could be the Herrenknecht tunneling machine that Musk investigated in Washington a couple of months ago, because it’s similar in size.
Below is an in-depth video of the Herrenknecht tunneling machine, which is 26 feet in diameter, roughly 400 feet long and a Dune-sandworm-ish 1,200 tons. The boring action starts around 1:05.
While there still seems to be some speculation about how far Musk plans to take this company — reportedly it’s a standalone entity, not a subsidiary of either SpaceX or Tesla — it seems clear that tunneling, at least theoretically, could lead to a marked decrease in traffic congestion. Musk often notes that it’s nonsensical to have 3D buildings coupled with 2D traffic grids, especially when all of the occupants of said 3D buildings like to come and leave at the same time. Tunneling, or boring rather, may also help if something like a Hyperloop were ever built underground. And some have even speculated that this tech could be useful for building underground colonies on Mars.
Who knows what Musk is really thinking. It seems we’ll have to wait until his other new company, Neuralink, turns us all into mind-reading cyborgs to find out.
What do you think about this boring news? Give us your boring thoughts in the comments below!
Images: YouTube / The Boring Company
