Pretty much the same that BMW and many others are doing where - depending on the model and the purchase price - the same ICE engine has 150, 200 or 250hp ( numbers pulled out of my anus) .
Just like BMW engineering!
Any old diesel engine will do, as you can completely disconnect it from everything electric and electronic and it will still be running. If you crank / push-start it it doesn’t even need a battery, you could time travel into the 16th century and the engine would still operate there if you have the fuel (lamp-oil should do) .
An emp isn’t likely to damage a starter and definitely not damage a car battery.
Let’s dig an underground tunnel in a city that’s famously below sea level and where the soil is so waterlogged they can’t even bury the dead in it. What could possibly go wrong?
(Clutches earpiece) Wait, wait, I’m being informed the entire French Quarter has collapsed into a sinkhole.
I’m guessing someone submitted the New Orleans application to troll Elon.
True. Cemeteries in New Orleans are above ground level because the residents eventually got tired of coffins floating down their streets every time it rained.
From the article:
It is not clear where the tunnel would be built or what purpose it would serve.
Also from the article:
Also unclear is how the project would overcome the geographic limitations of New Orleans, which has a historically high water table and sits on soil deposited from the Mississippi River.
Perhaps Elmo will be distracted by Xitter, the Terafab, or Martian colonization before he digs in New Orleans.
OTOH, he might be distracted by digging in New Orleans before he further destroys Twitter, discovers the laws of physics trying to build Terafab, or blows up more Starships trying to colonize Mars.
Starship isn’t an inherently nutty idea (I won’t speak to the wisdom of planning to colonize Mars), although it’s been disappointingly slow to come to pass; to the point one wonders if the engineers have run into problems that can’t be solved in the short or mid-term.
Starship is a wonderful and promising idea, but so far all it’s done is varieties of “burn down, fall over, and sink into the swamp”*.
Diverting Elmo from meddling further with it by inviting him to bore a tunnel in mud may allow SpaceX to make actual progress.
*small exaggeration for comic effect
It can’t help that they’re being expected to achieve impossible goals by a drugged-out megalomaniac who thinks he can invent new laws of physics and whose entire understanding of space travel is derived from space operas written before anyone had ever been there.
Tunnels are dug under water tables all the time, in fact I’ll bet y’all could name a bunch off the tops of your heads. Yes it would be expensive, but it’s not remotely unfeasible.
Well, now, that’s the problem. He promises solutions with the Boring Company that are relatively easy and cheap compared to conventional engineering projects. Because apparently that’s his MO - make grandiose promises and never follow through.
Didn’t you see what he wrought in Vegas? He basically recreated a subway but one that carried fewer passengers per hour and cost more. It is “better” than a conventional subway in no manner that can be explained to a sane human being.
And that still doesn’t address the question of precisely what transportation problem such a tunnel would solve for New Orleans
We’re talking about a guy who after 20+ years of work hasn’t been able to consistently replicate what NASA was doing 60 years ago. I wouldn’t trust my life to a tunnel he built in a city that’s well known for the time it filled up with water like a clogged bathtub.
I agree that he’s a fuck up, but digging below a water table is a solved problem…i’m just pointing out that’s not the issue here.
Digging below water through rock? Sure, that’s common. The geology under New Orleans is particularly challenging though. Not impossible, but there has to be some really impressive ROI to justify all the extra effort.
According to a USGS map and some initial Googling, there are clay formations in the vicinity of New Orleans, which present an even better substance to dig tunnels through than rock because it is softer and therefore cheaper but still resistant to water, plus self-sealing. However, I don’t know if one of those challenges you refer to include the extent and attachedness and consistent depth of the clay, which could complicate things.
The Boring Company sounds like an excellent way to trawl (not troll) for governments willing to invest in a boondoggle given sufficient kickbacks to the decisionmakers.
That and New Orleans go together like red beans and rice or beignets and chicory coffee.
Starship may never work but the Falcon 9 has been the most successful and reliable rocket ever created.
For the US, anyway. It has a ways to go before it displaces Soyuz