Connect with us

News

The first Boring Company tunnel is getting ready to open its gaping hole to the masses

Dig a hole, Elon.

boring company elon musk in tunnel with hard hat on
Image: Flickr

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Elon Musk’s Boring Company is anything but boring. Started as a joke, the company is now about to have its first operational tunnel.

It looked like the company was on (under?) shaky ground recently, as plans for a tunnel under Sepulveda Boulevard got axed after a local residents group sued. It appears that wasn’t the only direction Musk and Co was drilling in, and the Hawthorne test tunnel is now ready to have some riders.

Musk, being Musk, hyped up the news with a tweet that imitated a high-production movie poster.

More about the tunnel

Started back in 2017, the test tunnel runs from SpaceX’s HQ to a commercial plot that The Boring Company calls “O’Leary Station,” after a SpaceX/Boring Co staff member that recently passed away. The tunnel is a week late, as back in October Musk set a date of December 10th for it to be open to the public.

It’s now open, a week late, but no mention of free rides for the public at large, yet. The Boring Company website cites “unbelievably high demand” as the reason that it will be invite-only for the foreseeable future. I feel that unbelievable isn’t the right word, as the hype around this tunnel has been built up for ages now. Still, at least it’s open and we’ll likely get some pretty sweet hyper-lapse video from it.

YouTube video

The Boring Company is also building an elevator inside a garage nearby to the O’Leary Station site. This is one of the company’s Loop Lifts, which will carry one car down to the Loop on a ‘sled’ for transit. This is to prove that “a lift can be built in very small footprints and within existing buildings, whether they are houses, office buildings, or retail parking lots.”

That would make for super convenient commutes, as connections to the Loop could be put anywhere there is a car-sized spot of land.

And now for something completely different

Musk’s fondness for the Monty Python comedy troupe has led him to build a medieval-type watchtower over the tunnel’s start at SpaceX. When the watchtower was announced, Elon tweeted out that he wanted to hire someone to “yell insults at people in a French accent,” a reference to one of the well-known scenes from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

It’s been reported by Wired that Musk sometimes interrupts meetings to play short clips from the British comedy troupe.

What do you think of the tunnels? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

Follow us on Flipboard, Google News, or Apple News

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in News