I’m not sure why anyone believed this load of lies, tunnel boring is a mature industry with multiple companies that make tunnel boring machines, and tunnel boring has been around for well over a hundred years. The cutting heads move slowly because they’re between 3 and ~50 feet in diameter (1 to 15 meters for non Americans)
Anyone claiming they can 10x the speed of a physical process that has been worked on by thousands of engineers over more than a century is full of shit. Anyone who bought that explanation is either far too credulous or just doesn’t understand what it takes to bore a large diameter tunnel.
> Anyone claiming they can 10x the speed of a physical process that has been worked on by thousands of engineers over more than a century is full of shit.
Metal machining processes had been around for well over 100 years when tungsten carbide tooling came along, and that increased cutting speeds by 10x over HSS. It happens.
Sure but no one founded companies saying they were going to do exactly that until they actually had tungsten carbide tooling in hand and it was a production engineering issue.
What technology or research was the Boring company sitting on that it expected to utilize to get this advantage?
Which isn't the question: what promising things was the Boring company looking at? Not what they said they wanted to achieve, how were they planning on doing it?
Lithium batteries at all points were quite specific "we think <process> will reduce costs and make them viable".
Tunnel boring is only partly about boring the tunnel itself, bracing the tunnel and removing the spoils probably take as much time as boring the tunnel itself.
It’s a complex process with work crews, management layers, multiple subcontractors, multiple stakeholders, etc. Replacing the tool on a CNC mill with a tungsten carbide tool takes what, a few minutes? Assuming you already have the tool.
It’s also insanely easy to verify a tungsten carbide CNC tool is 10x faster at cutting metal than high speed steel vs. testing ‘This tunnel boring machine will be 10x faster.’
Space launch is a mature industry with multiple companies. Anyone who thinks SpaceX can lower the launch costs by orders of magnitude is either far to credulous or just doesn't understand what it takes to launch a rocket.
NASA procurement was (is?) full of pork barrel politics meant to provide jobs in as many states as possible. I would expect a lean private organization to easily beat NASA in cost per launch. What SpaceX has done is very impressive, I have a lot of respect for what they’ve accomplished.
Space travel is also far less mature than tunnel boring technology, I’d expect advances in space travel before tunnel boring because there’s low hanging fruit. Space travel used to be done only by nation-states, only in the last 25-30 years has private space travel been possible. Tunnel boring machines were invented 200 years ago and were useful about 150 years ago.
Wasn't that the OPs argument?
Companies have been building tunnel after tunnel [..] and optimized the process. No one had tried to large scale industrialize satellite + space launcher production before.
Anyone claiming they can 10x the speed of a physical process that has been worked on by thousands of engineers over more than a century is full of shit. Anyone who bought that explanation is either far too credulous or just doesn’t understand what it takes to bore a large diameter tunnel.