Ilon Musk officially began to drill near Los Angeles

On June 28, 2017, on his 46th birthday, Ilon Musk reported that the Godot tunneling shield had just completed the first tunnel segment near Los Angeles.

Back in May, the first driving shield, Ilon Musk, gave the name Godot (Godot), this is the name of the character from the play by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett “Waiting for Godot”. A unique feature of the play is that the two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for Godot to appear throughout the play (depending on the interpretation, it could be a person, God, or death), but Godot never appears. The play is recognized as "the most influential English drama of the 20th century."


In the comments to the tweet, Ilon Musk added that Godot could not be compared in speed with the fast as hell Gary snail, but it still drills quickly. Here he was referring to his joke from a speech at TED, where he compared the speed of passage of modern tunneling shields with the speed of a snail - the character of the cartoon “Spongebob”. The snail moves about 14 times faster than the most powerful modern shields.
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Therefore, in the parking lot near the SpaceX office, where drilling began, a basket with a Gary snail is installed - this is a symbol of the tremendous speed of drilling that Ilon Musk is trying to reach.



One way or another, Godot finished the first tunnel segment in Los Angeles. Ilon Mask did not say where this tunnel is, in which direction it is drilled and what is the length of the first segment. Earlier it was said that the first tunnel would connect Los Angeles International Airport with Culver City, Santa Monica, Westwood and further to Sherman Oaks, reducing the half-hour road to the airport (an hour with traffic) to 5 minutes.

The plan as a whole is to create a network of multi-level underground tunnels under the city in order to relieve the city streets from cars. The car descends on the elevator into the tunnel, is placed on a trolley above the contact rail - and rushes in unmanned mode along the specified route at a speed of 200 km / h. In principle, these bogies with the same speed can deliver both cyclists and pedestrians.


Probably, under the ground, the movement of platforms with cars is controlled by a single computer control system, which allows to achieve high efficiency, safety and high throughput of tunnels with interchanges of any complexity. Routing platforms with cars happens like packet switching in a communication network.

When, in February 2017, The Boring Company began to drill a tunnel in the SpaceX parking lot, it was reported that permission from the city authorities would be required to exit the parking lot. Ilon Musk mentioned talks with the mayor of the city and that it was more difficult to obtain bureaucratic permission than to develop the technology for this project.


Apparently, this permission has now been received.