Comment by arinlen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arinlen | Hacker News Reader

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> https://www.cst.ch/en/what-is-cst/ makes it sound as if they're trying to build small-diameter tunnels like the Boring Company, but using the strengths of the format much more cleverly.

This is ancient technology, literally over a century old.

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

No need to name-drop the Boring Company, as it's just a marketing company who bought a COTS tunneler.

Nothing that this company presented was novel. The critical aspect of putting together an railway network through tunnels is a) it's collosal construction and maintenance costs, b) property rights.

The numbers of putting together a tunnel network hardly add up, and ultimately projects fail because there is no way to make the numbers work unless you expect to fleece local and central governments.

It's also quite strange that CST's marketing brochure does not mention at all two of the main solutions to p2p logistics in urban environment: hub and spoke model with the last mile delivered with small electric cars/scooters/bicycles (Amazon already employs this heavily), and drones.

Claiming Boring is only a marketing company is not accurate. Even the first maschine they used was modified. The are are building their own now and they just raised 600M to finish engineering on Prufrock-3 and go into real production.

Just as with other Musk companies, the first version isn't that amazing and people fall over themselves laughting declaring how it will never work and never be practical and how they will never manage to produce them in real numbers.

So its basically like Falcon 1 and Tesla Roaster/Model S.

The leader of Boring is an engineer who was doing well at Tesla.

I think in 5-10 years it will be a very significant comapny.

> Claiming Boring is only a marketing company is not accurate. Even the first maschine they used was modified.

No, stating that the Boring Company is a marketing company that bought a COTS is an accurate statement. The Boring Company didn't invented tunellers digging holes in the ground, and just because it claimed it did modifications to a COTS tuneller (and uncorroborated ones) that changes nothing.

I understand that the Musk Stan phenomenon is a thing, but let's not try to make it look that he invented fire and the wheel.

So any company that buys anything for a starting point and then changes it and evolves from there is not a real company? That is your opinion?

> that changes nothing

And you know this how?

> that he invented fire and the wheel.

I literally said they bought a machine and they are working iteration by iteration to improve it.

Who are you arguing against?

> Just as with other Musk companies, the first version isn't that amazing and people fall over themselves laughting declaring how it will never work and never be practical and how they will never manage to produce them in real numbers.

It's not clear to me what you are saying here. Is it that Musk is clarivoyant, and always selects for lines of business where exponential progress is certain to be made incrementally, or is it that his involvement guarantees that incremental progress will always be made?

As a follow-up to the former: do you think that's the case for Twitter?

As a follow-up to the latter: for how many companies do you believe Musk can simultaneously ensure success?

To throw in my 2c (having worked at Tesla before) - I don't think it is either of these directly. Clearly no one is clairvoyant, however Elon is not one to take the status quo as an answer (eg his first principles mantra). And making a ton of incremental improvements over and over (especially in industries that tend to be risk averse to any changes) can result in huge improvements over time. And it's not like he is directly involved with those improvements. But there is a culture of no BS and fix things if you see it broken, get rid of as much bureaucracy as possible, etc. So if he can instill those cultural values he doesn't need to be directly involved. And if something goes wrong, it can also change on a dime, and go a different direction.

I don't think there's much argument that Tesla and SpaceX have effective corporate cultures, but that doesn't strike me as unique or a guarantee of enterprise success on its own. Nor is "fix broken things" all that new -- that was sort of the basis of the the Toyota Production System / "Lean" revolution in manufacturing that Tesla itself adapted.

My read of GP's comment is that even without any concrete evidence to support a prediction of success (and indeed possibly the opposite), for some reason Musk's involvement alone is enough to be confident that the Boring Company will be relevant in 5-10 years. It's hard for me to understand his logic without writing it off as personality cult stuff.

You don’t think being backed by the world’s richest man, who is a also serially successful entrepreneur, and also an engineer, might make a venture more likely to succeed?

Its not not about what is 'new'. Its about what is consistently effective.

> that was sort of the basis of the the Toyota Production System / "Lean" revolution in manufacturing that Tesla itself adapted.

Yes but Toyota then stuck around for to long on one technology.

> Musk's involvement alone is enough to be confident that the Boring Company will be relevant in 5-10 years. It's hard for me to understand his logic without writing it off as personality cult stuff.

That seems like a strange opinion. If somebody us successful in other conservative high capital business then its a personality cult to suggest that this might be possible again.

And the reason are partly the same. Electrification. So its not even a totally different unique field.

And its not just Musk. I just generally think its a good idea to remove complexity from the tunnel and put it into the pod. One of the big problems with subways is limited numbers and terrible maintenance. You can piggyback of the EV industry.

Both. By selecting conservative industries high capital intensive industries its very likely that incremental improvements can be made. Large companies with large capital investment try to leverage those as long as they can. Musk build his company with consistent improvement as the core strategy.

> As a follow-up to the former: do you think that's the case for Twitter?

I have no idea. Its such a different thing. I don't think its a great use of his time.

> As a follow-up to the latter: for how many companies do you believe Musk can simultaneously ensure success?

I don't think he can ensure it, but it makes it much likely.

But I would say the number is not static. It depends on the problems that exist within the companies. In 2017 during Model 3 ramp it was likely 1 of them, but lucky at that point SpaceX had nailed the most fundamental things in terms of reuse and the company faced on lethal issues.

He he access to lots of great people that he at least partly trust to put into these positions. So that helps, and he pretty good at recruiting young talent.

So I don't really know.

Arguably the key would be picking industries ripe for disruption if you’re willing to look stupid for awhile.

Those would be high-capital low output in general, as low capital or high output have probably already tried many things.

If there’s a Muskette strength it would be identifying those.

> as it's just a marketing company who bought a COTS tunneler.

You mean a marketing company that built their own tunneler, surely. The one they originally bought isn't being used anymore, as far as I know.

They have two now apparently, one in California and one in Texas. But public information on these is sparse, I've not been able to find out much about them. This seems uncharacteristic for an Elon Musk company; Musk and SpaceX talk at length about their rockets for instance. There is a different level of public interest between rockets and boring, which might explain why there is more public information about the rockets. Still, I'm not surprised people are skeptical (or ignorant to the existence) of these bores.

>> There is a different level of public interest between rockets and boring

Or the simple practicalities of the later. I'm a member of the public. What I know of the boring project comes from the youtube videos of the traffic jams in the current Vegas tesla tunnel project. Building an underground tunnel to bypass above-ground traffic problems worked only on the Simpsons (Stonecutter episode). In the real world such tunnels are just another 1-lane road subject to all the same problems as they would on the surface, plus a bunch of bonus problems. It isn't interesting because it isn't practical.

So no subway ever approved anything in terms of traffic?

This is ancient technology, literally over a century old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway

See also, the Chicago Tunnel Company: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company

According to Wiki, Chicago's started running in 1906, and London's in 1927.

That argument seems parallel to 'Yeah nothing cool about M1 Mac. We've had transistors for decades.'

Well, there's nothing really novel about CST, is there? What's cool is how it puts together elements, IMO.

I mean the M1 exists and you can go buy one.

Paper processors get released all the time.

In the year 90 [i]n the former Roman province of Syria (located in modern day Jordan), researchers are currently studying a sensational canal system. It extends mostly underground over a distance of 106 kilometers (66 miles).

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/rome-s-tremendous...

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

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