The Boring Company’s tiny Las Vegas Loop is all that’s come of Musk’s promises to build superfast mass-transit “hyperloops.” Workers say its tunnels are packed with chemical sludge.

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The [tunnel’s] accelerants cure the grout that seals the tunnel’s concrete supports, helping the grout set properly and protecting the work against cracks and other deterioration. They also seriously burn exposed human skin. At the Encore dig site, such burns became almost routine, workers there told Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. An investigation by the state OSHA, which Bloomberg Businessweek has obtained via a freedom of information request, describes workers being scarred permanently on their arms and legs. According to the investigation, at least one employee took a direct hit to the face. In an interview with Businessweek, one of the tunnel workers recalls the feeling of exposure to the chemicals: “You’d be like, ‘Why am I on fire?’”

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
      0·
      4 months ago

      I thought Las Vegas was on Earth, but I could be wrong as I haven’t been there (to Las Vegas I mean, I’ve been to Earth).

      Anyway, if you’re already building a tunnel, you might as well put a train in it, even on Mars.

      • jarfil@beehaw.org
        0·
        4 months ago

        I think that’s where the Hyperloop fits in: on Earth, it isn’t practical to keep the required level of vacuum, but it would be quite easy on Mars. At the same time, they need to perfect the tunnel digging process, and cars are the excuse to do it on Earth.

          • jarfil@beehaw.org
            0·
            4 months ago

            Kind of ironic that video has an ad for a “mental hygiene” app… when a good first step would be not watching that sort of videos… but let’s go point by point:

            • Logistics: that’s SpaceX. Starship is planned to carry up to 100 people at once. As for trip duration, think XV century ships on multi-month long trips: tough, but survivable. Will need unmanned supply trips, but as it says, some could fail, just send more. Manned trips… if they’re full of volunteers, some could fail too (plenty more where those came from).
            • Justification: because. Same as always: adventure, fame, science. Probably no raping indigenous population and robbing them of gold, but still. People get into F1 cars, skydive, free climb, etc. Some die, that doesn’t stop the next ones.
            • Living on Mars: yes, probably in underground habitats. Definitely not “just the 1%”, the plan is to have indentured labor, so everyone has a chance! (to be a slave, but on Mars) Premature death… see previous point.
            • Psychological effects: with a few hundred people, same as in any small society. Not everyone needs to be surrounded by billions of people 24/7.
            • Terraforming: red herring. Musk doesn’t have plans for that, so less BS.
            • Alternatives: night on Antarctica is 4320 hours, on the Moon it’s 336 hours, night on Mars is 12 hours and 18 minutes. See the difference?
            • Mars One: red herring. Not a Musk project, scammy from the beginning. That’s two totally BS points.

            It’s a risky plan, but still a plan.

            • 4dpuzzle@beehaw.orgEnglish
              0·
              4 months ago

              Wow! You really believe all the lies Musk says? This is the same guy who has been promising ‘full software driving’ next year for nearly a decade, fantasizing about downloading human memory engrams, insisting that hyperloop is ‘not so hard’ and says things like ‘I know more about manufacturing than anyone else alive’.

              How much knowledge does it take to realize that 100 people per starship is simply impossible? There simply isn’t enough room. And read your statement about underground dwellings and sunlight times together to see how they’re incompatible. Musk isn’t saying all these because he’s a dreaming visionary. He’s saying these to trick other rich people into giving him more money. It has the same vibes as the monorail song.

            • billhicksghost@beehaw.org
              0·
              4 months ago

              What absurd opening logic. The first person is a rocket engineer. He doesn’t just play Kerbel Space, he designs rockets.

              The schematics for Starship allows for at best 15-20 people. Supplies are a thing. The ability for humans to travel & survive for this distance is not established at all, nor is the ability to build structures, grow food, supply air & water, etc

              Psychological effects: with a few hundred people, same as in any small society.

              This confident nonsense is like discussing reality with an Iraq War Cheerleader Circa 2004-2007 .

              There’s no plan. To get to the Moon, Starship itself requires ~-15 refueling launches using a method that doesn’t exist, despite the taxpayers giving the company 300+ million dollars to develop it.