The Boring Company begins testing, shows off Godot, test sled

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When Elon Musk has an idea, he’s usually pretty quick to jump on it, so it may come as no surprise that his latest flight of fancy is already well underway. The Boring Company is meant to ease above-ground traffic using a series of underground tunnels. Today, Musk has shown off some early testing for The Boring Company including its first tunnel boring machine, Godot, and their electric sled.

Since testing has been happening on the same site as the SpaceX offices, the team can do a lot of preliminary testing without jumping through too many administrative hoops. This has allowed things to come together pretty quickly. The test trench has been dug, Godot is starting to be locked into place, they’ve even separately got a test track for the electric sled that will be used to shuttle vehicles quickly — up to around 130 mph — through the tunnels. Musk posted a series of Instagram photos and videos showing the progress, a few of which you can see below.

Entry hole, staging area and starting tunnel for Boring Machine 1 (aka Godot) now complete

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on

First up is a simple shot of the point of entry for Godot. You can also see where several of the segments for Godot have been lowered into place in the starting tunnel. The entire machine will be reportedly be a few hundred feet long once it’s complete.

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Cutterhead in operation at standard industry speed. Planning to jack this up by a factor of ten or more.

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on

The cutting head is shown in motion, though Musk is clearly not satisfied with the standard industry speed. A later post joked about a race between Godot and their pet snail, Gary, who conveniently lives in a pineapple (though not under the sea).

Last but absolutely not least, we see a test run of the electric sled. Musk warns (and I’ll reiterate) that this video may cause motion sickness or seizures, the camera is somewhat bumpy, and it speeds past lighting in the tunnel, so view at your own risk.

As you can see, The Boring Company is well on its way and is clearly something that Musk is quite serious about. Do you think these underground tunnels will ever come to a city near you? Tell us what you think in the comment section below, or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

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