The Boring Company launches a new competition in which anyone can participate. This competition forces teams to come up with solutions for tunneling and answer the question: “Can you beat the snail?"

The Boring Company is gauging interest from everyone (students, companies, hobbyists, etc.) from around the world to design, build, and race their own tunneling solution at The Boring Company's Dig-a-Factory in the first Not-a-Boring Competition in Spring 2021.

Teams will compete to bore a 30-meter tunnel with a cross-sectional area of ​​0.2 square meters (equivalent to a circle with a 0.5-meter diameter). Winning categories will include:

• Fastest to complete tunnel
• Fastest to complete the tunnel and a driving surface (we will drive a Tesla remote controlled car through the tunnel)
• Most accurate guidance system - how far away is the tunnel from its target?

The Boring Company’s goal is to build the tunnel infrastructure necessary to enable fast, safe, and comfortable transportation, including Loop and Hyperloop. To feasibly build a large network of tunnels, one must first rapidly innovate to increase tunneling speed and reduce tunneling costs.

To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D, which means either flying cars or tunnels. Unlike flying cars, tunnels are weatherproof, out of sight, and won't fall on your head. A large network of tunnels many levels deep would help alleviate congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels). The key to making this work is increasing tunneling speed and dropping costs by a factor of 10 or more - this is the goal of The Boring Company. Fast to dig, low-cost tunnels would also make Hyperloop adoption viable and enable rapid transit across densely populated regions.

If you want to become a participant in the competition, leave your application here.

H/T Mars is my soulcat / Twitter