Musk weighs in on plan for $20 trillion tunnel linking New York to London

[4th]

Musk weighs in on plan for $20 trillion tunnel linking New York to London
https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/383148/musk-weighs-in-on-plan-for-20-trillion-tunnel-linking-new-york-to-london

Spanning 3,400 miles, the tunnel would be the most ambitious infrastructure project ever undertaken.
The difficulties of building an underground rail tunnel all the way from London to New York might seem insurmountable, yet plans to actually construct such a tunnel are genuinely being considered, with those behind the idea estimating that it could cost somewhere in the region of $20 trillion.

Not only would the tunnel be the longest ever built by a huge margin at 3,400 miles long, but it would also make incredibly fast trans-Atlantic travel a reality, with trips between New York and London taking a mere 54 minutes to complete.

This remarkably short travel time would be achieved by creating a vacuum within the tunnel and using pressurized vehicles that could theoretically reach speeds of up to 3,000mph.

...

I got a better idea. How about a tunnel to Mars?

[viva la]

1. Musk should be the first passenger.

[skypilot]

92. And the last.

*

[C_U_L8R]

2. Trump couldn't even build a portion of a simple wall

Perhaps his staff shouldn't be boasting about building squat.

[Walleye]

3. That should bring the price of eggs down

Is this considered efficient by his DOGE

[Johonny]

4. The Mid-Atlantic ridge spreads 2 to 5 cm per year. It also is known to be, you know, an active volcanic region.

Not sure tunneling through the mid-atlantic ridge is a great engineering idea.

[Kid Berwyn]

72. Flooded tunnels are not something I like, either.

The late, great Harry Harrison thought of it first.



https://www.ziesings.com/pages/books/48935/harry-harrison/a-transatlantic-tunnel-hurrah

[GreenWave]

76. Exactamundo. If he is so rich, how come he's not smart?

[Johonny]

83. His companies hire smart people

Often highly motivated people that believe in the mission and have a passion for space, or electric cars etc . . .

He is known to demand stupid things all the time from his employees. The goal is to try at all costs working on doomed projects. The turnover rate in his companies is high, the pay good, not great, and there are no unions.

[snowybirdie]

5. He's fallen in love with tunnels

Planned the idea of a tunnel under the streets if Chicago to O'Hare Airport several years ago. A former mayor loved it. Never built. Guess the existing subway system made too much competition. Dumbass!

[Celerity]

17. The Boring Company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company



The Boring Company (TBC) is an American infrastructure, tunnel construction services, and equipment company founded by Elon Musk. TBC was founded as a subsidiary of SpaceX in 2017, and was spun off as a separate corporation in 2018. TBC has completed one tunneling project that is open to the public, as well as multiple test tunnels.

In 2018, TBC completed one tunnel for testing in Los Angeles County, California. In 2021, TBC completed the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) Loop, which is a three-station transportation system consisting of 1.7 miles (2.7 km) of tunnels. As of April 2024, a segment to Resorts World Las Vegas is also open, and tunnels to Encore and Westgate resorts are being finalized. The system is planned to expand to a total of 68 miles (109 km) of tunnels in Las Vegas.

Many other TBC projects in cities across the United States have been announced, but subsequently were cancelled or became inactive due to a lack of activity from the company.

[LeftInTX]

53. Chicago doesn't have a subway. It has trains. FWIW: Musk wanted to do the same to San Antonio.

Really? Come on SA International is a Class C airport. The city could simply invest in a shuttle service for 8 miles! It would connect our "world class airport" (which is an embarrassment BTW) and downtown. It's not like traffic is at a standstill from the airport to downtown. Yes, the road can get some heavy traffic during rush hour, but overall it has less congestion than our other freeways.

[magicarpet]

6. Yeeee Haaaa,... Eloon's tunnel drilling company would make $19 trillion ,.....

... dollars if this project was approved.

If the don-OLD could get a healthy kickback of say $5 trillion he would issue an expedited executive order to commence the project immediately.

Yee Haaa,.. the level of graft and corruption djt could never envision without Musk by his side.

[Irish_Dem]

8. Trump is going to make Musk pay him more than $5T for this contract.

[Emrys]

19. The feasibility studies on projects like this are where the easiest money is.

Sit around for 5-10 years chewing the fat and running up expenses. Hire in a bunch of your cronies as consultants. All at vastly inflated rates. Then draw up a glossy report at the end and watch it sit around while no one knows what to do with it after it lands with dull thuds on their desks and there's no money left over to do anything anyway.

You never have to get your hands dirty or build a thing.

[Irish_Dem]

7. $20 trillion on a tunnel, but no money for SS, Medicare, healthcare, education.

Of course he will pocket the $20 Trillion.

[Abolishinist]

23. The title of the OP is "Musk weighs in on plan for $20 trillion tunnel linking New York to London"

The part of the article the OP skipped over was that he said in a social media post that he could do the entire project for 1000 times less than the estimated $20 trillion price tag using his own construction and infrastructure firm The Boring Company.

That would make the price tag $20 billion, which also means he could fund it himself if he was really interested in this.

[Renew Deal]

42. It could be profitable at 20 billion

Besides the contribution to humanity and improvement to the environment

[Emrys]

49. That estimate's from the guy who bought Twitter for $44 billion

I'd take any financial projections he concocts with a few gazillion bushels of salt.

Since 2010, the UK has been trying to build HS2, a high-speed rail line comprising 149 miles of track, estimated to be more or less complete by 2033. So far (and I'd better type fast as it's climbing all the time) it's projected to cost over $200 billion, and it has a total of just 32 miles of tunnels along its route.

I don't even know how much environmental improvement it would bring even it was feasible (which it isn't). It would require building a hermetically sealed tube 3,400 miles long that would be capable of withstanding not just oceanic pressure but the high vacuum that would be required. That's a hell of a lot of material that would have to be dug up, transported, processed etc., which would have its own environmental impacts and carbon footprint, not to mention the power required to establish and maintain that vacuum.

It's probably not worth expending time going through all the other vast number of challenges and operational and safety concerns because it's simply a non-starter.

[Renew Deal]

66. $20 billion seems low when you consider how much stadiums seem to cost

Last edited Tue Dec 17, 2024, 11:25 AM - Edit history (1)

If it’s difficult to build a modern stadium on land for under $1 billion, I’m not sure how this would work for 20.

I agree about the complexity and the risks are high during construction and after it’s put into use.

[Emrys]

69. Well, yeah, we went through this sort of thought experiment in the UK

when Boris Johnson ordered a feasibility study into at first a tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland (which would have had to cross Beaufort's Dyke, a thousand foot-deep undersea trench that's home to "the United Kingdom's largest offshore dump site for surplus conventional and chemical munitions after the Second World War", along with other assorted delights, but details, details), then a series of tunnels linking Scotland, Northern Ireland and England, with a massive underground roundabout beneath the Isle of Man. Hitches identified were the large landing stations required at the extremities (which would probably need to be larger for Musk's little scheme to accommodate the vacuum machinery, customs facilities, parking etc. etc.).

As I said, in the UK we're trying a smaller-scale experiment for real with HS2. The cost of complulsory purchase orders for some of the land required alone has been astronomical. Then there's the question of why London, on the UK's cluttered south-east coast, for the transatlantic link? If the idea is to speed travel to Europe (and the UK), surely a landing point somewhere on the Continent's west coast would make more sense. Apart from anything else, Greater London's already overdeveloped and land is at a premium, to the extent that the long-running saga of an additional airport to service London has been driven to envisage creating artificial islands at various locations in the Thames Estuary to house it.

As with all such schemes, it's all very well making wild claims about "theoretical" top speeds and journey times, but anyone who's travelled by air knows that getting to the departure point, the check-in process and clearing customs (which would have to be a major consideration with the Musk link) sometimes takes nearly as long as the flight itself.

We used to have a Concord air service between the UK (and another in France) and the US offering a fastest journey time of just under three hours. It was eventually abandoned, not least because it was uneconomical.

[Disaffected]

9. B. S. C.

. maintain a vacuum in a 3 thousand mile long underwater tube?? And it would be an interesting calculation just to determine the amount of energy required to pump the air out.

. rescue people stuck in the middle somewhere due to mechanical failure?? Maybe they will all wear space suits.

. carry out rescues and maintenance in an evacuated tube (maybe the workers will wear spacesuits)??

. build something like that for $20 billion?? R-I-G-H-T....

OTOH, planeloads of folks pretty routinely die in crashes so what the hey?

[IcyPeas]

10. 54 minutes? Why am i thinking of that submersible sub that imploded?

Weren't those passengers all billionaires?

...trips between New York and London taking a mere 54 minutes to complete.

This remarkably short travel time would be achieved by creating a vacuum within the tunnel and using pressurized vehicles that could theoretically reach speeds of up to 3,000mph.

[elleng]

11. 'This remarkably short travel time would be achieved by creating a vacuum within the tunnel

and using pressurized vehicles that could theoretically reach speeds of up to 3,000mph.'

Right.

[shanti]

57. OK?

He couldn't even get his self-driving cars to 100% accuracy. Didn't he also try this in LA?

[Emrys]

70. Musk can't even get videos to play reliably on Twitter without stuttering unwatchably! n/t

[Retrograde]

12. There's a 1930s movie about this

that I saw recently. IIRC, the tunnel builders had some problems, such as running out of breathable air during the construction. Does Elon know that people like to breathe?

This sounds like a version of his hypertube boondoggle. That didn't take into consideration basic things such as the earth is curved, pressurizing a tunnel that long is not trivial, and human bodies don't do well with being suddenly accelerated and decelerated. And who is going to pay for this?

ETA: the movie is 1935's "The Transatlantic Tunnel" (also known as "The Tunnel&quot It shows up on TCM occasionally

[La Coliniere]

13. Seems very unlikely to me.

The pipe dream of a dipshit.

[rampartd]

14. and tariffs, youi know, i started using that word, tariffs its a beautiful word will pay for it

mid atlantic ridge you freakin dolt. might as well tunnel through the center of the earth to china,

musk will be able to pay for it with his profits from the bitcoin reserve?

"keep thinkin' butch, that's what yo'u;re good at" sundance kid

[Meowmee]

15. 😹

[Beartracks]

16. The US needs high speed passenger rail first.

[SheltieLover]

18. And next he will be saying the Brits will pay for it.

[eppur_se_muova]

20. The Mid-Ocean Ridge is one of the most seismically active areas on earth; 5.5 mag earthquakes are common.

Oh, plus there's the outpourings of lava. But please proceed, Mr. Technoking.

[Diraven]

77. Also the distance widens 4 cm per year

Due to tectonic drift. That could cause problems for a vacuum sealed tunnel.

[eppur_se_muova]

93. And the gaps are continuously filled in by ... fresh, hot lava flows ! }:D nt

[keep_left]

21. Eloon's "Super Chunnel" sounds like one of those pie-in-the-sky predictions...

...from that Donald Fagen song, I.G.Y. Except that Fagen wrote that as a tongue-in-cheek satire about growing up in the early '60s.

On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
90 minutes from New York to Paris
Well, by '76 we'll be a-OK

Here's the song, on vinyl and analog audio for that extra retro touch.

?si=bbbhDhTVx1_LQaIw

[4th]

68. IGY. Thank you. I thought I lost it forever.

I'm also vaguely remembering a novel by Harry Harrison (of Soylent Green fame) set in an alternate universe where the Americans lost the Revolutionary War. Something about connecting the two capitals of the British Empire and a steam locomotive with an atomic reactor.

Can't remember the title.

[keep_left]

81. You're welcome. Very little music is ever really lost when there's YouTube.

Speaking of I.G.Y., I should point out that even though that this YouTube video features old-school analog audio (vinyl record, also the stereo gear might be from Audio Research, known for their high-end vacuum tube designs), The Nightfly was one of the earliest pop/rock recordings that was made completely on digital media. It's still used today by sound engineers to "ring out" an audio system, particularly when it comes to live "front of house" sound.

[drmeow]

88. LOVE Fagen's solo stuff nt

[taxi]

22. Not counting operating expenses, at $10,000 a trip

it would take 2 billion trips to break even.
Now that's a hell of a lot of tourism.

[Irish_Dem]

24. Musk is sounding more and more Bipolar, or on some serious speed and other drugs.

[RobinA]

73. I'm Pretty Convinced

he is bipolar and the person who made sure he took his meds quit some years back. Probably a little before TikToc. That's when he really seemed to run off the rails permanently.

[Irish_Dem]

74. Hard to tell when they are also doing quite a few other drugs.

First we would need to get him detoxed, then stay clean and sober.

Then we take a look at him and make a diagnosis.

I tend to agree with you, I think he is going to be bipolar.

Do you know who might have been making him take his meds?

Also he could have increased his drug use which made his bipolar worse.

[UTUSN]

25. My immediate nightmare: Him, Drumpf, any wingnut as my seatmate on the entire trip.

[DFW]

55. I think he knows how repellant that would be to most people

That’s why he’s limiting the travel time to 54 minutes. Any longer than that, and most people would prefer to take a week on the Queen Mary.

[DBoon]

26. That's not a plan

That's a ketamine-induced hallucination!

[Lunabell]

27. Oh, good grief!!

A fricking tunnel to London, but no food for hungry kids? WTF is wrong with these billionaire boys???? They clamor on about birthing babies, but refuse to feed them. They'd rather have a stupid, unnecessary vanity project. Sick fuck!!

[Maeve]

28. Besides the cost, the lack of need and the incredible risks

Last edited Tue Dec 17, 2024, 08:25 AM - Edit history (1)

What could possibly go wrong?
Makes the Mars trip sound sensible

[Renew Deal]

44. There is a need

And could reduce travel times to all of Europe. If it connected to an airport than ran shuttle flights the ways busses run, you could get to most of Europe in up to 3 hours.

I just don’t know if you can make it profitable enough. And what happens if there is a major catastrophe? Travel to and from Europe would have to be completely reshaped instantly.

[Maeve]

65. Who "needs" to get to Europe from here in an hour?

Convenient, I suppose---the flight over can be tedious, I agree, but seriously can't imagine the "need" for that kind of speed to physically move folks around the world.
How about we feed everyone first?

[roamer65]

29. Never mind plate tectonics, eh Eloon?

[haele]

30. I'm sure Plate Techtonics might have something to say about that.

But hey, technology is way cooler and better than silly old Natural Sciences, anyway.

Ketamine or Cocaine talk.

Haele

[Yavin4]

31. How about a HSR all along the Eastern seaboard?

Let's do that instead. It would open up places for more housing which would bring down housing costs.

[reACTIONary]

32. Unexplained Mysteries Indeed nt

[Emrys]

33. Has anybody bothered to ask London if it really wants to be physically linked to New York?

I mean, they do realize it's on England's east coast, don't they? That's a fair whack of the English Channel or southern England to dig up, depending on which route they took.

Gorblimey, we're still staggering in the UK and smarting at the cost of the chaotic HS2 rail link, which may never be completed, had a complete hash of a business case in the first place when it started to be planned in the early 2010s, is currently estimated to cost over £170 billion, which you can probably at least double if past major UK infrastructure projects are any guide, and may be "mostly" complete by 2033 if there are no other major fuckups. The planning process alone has been an absolute nightmare, with some extensive plots of land compulsorily purchased now no longer being needed because the original route has been severely cut back, and endless complications with projected tunnelling and other routing glitches. A poll in 2021 found that 56% of people thought it was a waste of money, and I doubt that's improved since.

The Channel Tunnel had to be bailed out by the government because the private contractors crashed the budget and effectively went bust, and at least with that there was something of a coherent business case, well until Brexit came along that is.

Maybe Musk should finish fucking up the projects he's already got in hand before he thinks about taking on any more.

[róisín_dubh]

48. I live in the UK

And my folks live in NJ. I’d love to be home to see them in less than an hour.
But there’s zero chance in hell I’d take this ride. Put every billionaire on earth in it first for a test run. Then maybe. Haha

[Emrys]

50. Yeah, the Channel Tunnel freaks quite a few people out,

and that's only 30 miles or so. It's also a bit inconveniently situated if Musk was to go a-tunneling in the Channel to get to London.

I'd probably pay a reasonable subscription to a YouTube channel that had live video of Musk being accelerated to 3,000 mph and decelerated back down to zero as a proof of concept. They could raffle off his remains in a bucket at the end as a fundraiser.

[sakabatou]

34. It's all BS.

Remember that hyper loop demo he had awhile back? Yeah, that was BS.

[VGNonly]

35. NYC and London

will be underwater long before this boondoggle could ever be built.

[Historic NY]

36. Once your in you can't get out

[NotASurfer]

37. Dictators and their shortcoming-compensation megaprojects

I've heard something like this before, associated with a certain megalomaniac from the last century, who had this guy he relied on for his vision for building cool sounding stuff. One idea involved connecting the lands of the Reich using double-decker supertrains on 3 meter gauge tracks. Apparently ordered, but not built.

[DavidDvorkin]

38. Harry Harrison wrote that novel decades ago

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0765327864

[4th]

75. That's it. Thanks. n/t

[hatrack]

39. What a pile of steaming drug-induced BULLSHIT . . . .

Why not drill a tunnel through the Earth's core while you're at?

I'm sure Ketamine Tony Stark is up to the task!!

[Renew Deal]

40. How many riders can you get per year?

It would probably need to be around 10 million to approach profitably

[LudwigPastorius]

41. So, you're going to build a 3,400 mile long tunnel under a 5000 meter water column?

I'd call Musk a bullshit artist, but there are much better liars in the world than him.

[canetoad]

43. Gonna need some high-faluting expansion joints

Where it crosses the mid-Atlantic ridge.

[DJ Synikus Makisimus]

45. Like this?

[Initech]

46. I'd rather just send him to Mars, can we do that, please?

[ForgedCrank]

47. Yea, I

think he's tried selling this idea before.
Like most startup ideas he has, this is an effort to draw from public funds.

[LeftInTX]

51. OMG!!!

[Blue Owl]

52. This is the best idea since the Springfield Monorail

[underpants]

79. 😆😆😆😆👍

[Hassler]

54. The Ketamine Kid has a plan to bankrupt both UK and US

[flvegan]

56. Why are we giving this air?

It simply can't be done. That's it. The entire premise is bullshit, but here we are.

[Aussie105]

58. This is a Spruce Goose moment!

A moment in history where it is shown a genius is just one inch from madness, and his next genius idea shows he has tipped over the edge.

Howard Hughes had his Spruce Goose, Elon has both his Mars colony and impossible tunnel.

Any questions?

[Akakoji]

59. This is hubris turned into fevered insanity

Remember The Concorde? The idea that pressure could be created beneath the sea and not destroy the Earth is stupidity multiplied.

[Norbert]

60. I'm so glad we are controlling outrageous spending

[JoseBalow]

61. How about a bridge to Hawaii?

We are truly living in the age of Idiocracy.

[Vinca]

62. Tell him it would require a 99.9% tax on billionaires and he'll STFU about it.

[bdamomma]

63. Elon

needs to STFU, and go back to South Africa where he came from!!!

[Hotler]

64. He'll need a lot of child labor for that. How many will die for his tunnel? nt

[edhopper]

67. Empty promise Elon

SpaceX will start launching Starships to Mars in 2026, Elon Musk says

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-mars-launches-2026-elon-musk

[Diraven]

78. He has a history of outlandish prerictions

Which never come to pass.

[edhopper]

89. Exactly

Tesla's stock price is based on the fever dream of a self driving car.

[bif]

71. Is this from The Onion?

[Basso8vb]

80. Teh stupud

It burnz.

[chouchou]

82. The tectonic plates (continents)

moves about 4-5 in per year. In 10 years about 40-50 inches. Wouldn't that destroy the vacuum in this weird tunnel ?

[Oneear]

84. Interesting Elon Musk has a Tunnel Company called The Boring Company TBC

So, for any Tunnel, Who Built it would be the Question to have Answered

[Borogove]

85. This is even dumber than his proposal to provide all of the sperm for his Martian colony sperm bank.

[Norbert]

86. Your social security dollars at work.

[JCMach1]

87. Google Boring Company and scam

[struggle4progress]

90. How about a privately-financed borehole from Mar-a-Lago

to its antipode?

Then if Trump needed a quick get-a-way he could just jump down the hole

Call the company "Bore holes for Boors"

[PCIntern]

91. Here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tunnel_(1935_film)?wprov=sfti1

The wiki link is the entire above-captioned-not just the first line


The Tunnel (U.S. title: Transatlantic Tunnel) is a 1935 British science fiction film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Richard Dix, Leslie Banks, Madge Evans, Helen Vinson, C. Aubrey Smith and Basil Sydney. It is based on the 1913 novel The Tunnel by Bernhard Kellermann, about the building of a transatlantic tunnel between New York and London. The script was written by Curt Siodmak, L. du Garde Peach and Clemence Dane. The film, produced at a time when the threat of war loomed in Europe, emphasized international cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom.

[City Lights]

94. He should shut his big mouth. nt

[Sogo]

95. ....and Mexico's going to pay for it?

…and yet, we can’t afford universal healthcare or universal pre-care, or to save SS and Medicare??

Dumbest idea for the use of 20 TRILLION ever.