How realistic is Elon Musk's plan for digging tunnels under Los Angeles via the Boring Company?
How realistic is it?First, I have to lay my pessimism cards on the table. I have lived in California for most of my life. I have watched how California treats any kind of infrastructure project. Roads, Rails, any transport system of any kind, or even moving a chain link fence 14 feet if you happen to be in the “Coastal Zone”. I can say with some reasonable authority; in California, in the current political and legal climate here, creating any new transportation infrastructure project will fail under the weight of bureaucratic buffoonery and environmental lawsuits. It just will.Now, let me cover the engineering and economic side of things, setting aside that it will be sued into oblivion for threatening the habitat of the Pacific Coast Cave Spider (I just made that up… but someone will find something… mark my words!).With current technology, which is what every other answer talks about ( in a “dollars per mile” equation), it would fail.Elon Musk has already said several times that he thinks that Tunnel Boring Machines can be built, without an enormous stretch of technology (that is, no “unobtainium” or brand new physics or rare materials), TBM’s that can go many times faster than current TBM’s.Faster means that per mile cost gets cheaper, as long as the TBM cost doesn’t more than triple (you can bore a LOT of tunnels with one TBM… so the cost can be higher, and drive the per-mile cost down).If The Boring Company really does design, fund, build, and successfully test, a 21st century TBM that can create concrete lined tunnels in a variety of geologies at a rate of 10 or 20 or more times faster than todays TBM’s? Then massive multi hundred mile tunnels and transportation systems become very, very much more affordable… and doable.Well, doable anywhere but California. They will develop the tech in California, and it will probably be used first in either Europe or Asia.Never here.
What is conveyor belt material?
There are five main materials that conveyor belts are made out of: thermoplastics, metal, rubber, fabric and leather. Plastics include polyester, polyvinyl chloride, silicone and polyethylene. The metals are stainless and carbon steel, and the fabric materials are canvas or cotton. The most popular material is a rubber composite because it is flexible, resistant, smooth and seamless.It also doesn’t have any holes or openings. To increase strength, many belt materials contain additives, including fabric, steel, polyester or fiberglass. Many flat belts are actually composed of a core material and a covering. These belts are parts of many different types of conveyors, including troughed, inclined, horizontal, food grade and overhead conveyors, but they are not used in chain, pneumatic or screw conveyors.Choosing the right belting material is the most important specification involved with conveyor systems because the wrong material could compromise productivity or worker safety.Conveyor systems, especially those in manufacturing facilities, travel through many different environments. For example, assembly line conveyors may travel through an oven, underwater parts washer or some sort of secondary operation like painting. Therefore, they must be resistant, durable and able to handle these harsh conditions on a continuous and regular basis.Belts that carry ingredients, raw materials and finished, unpackaged goods in food or beverage processing plants are made of either stainless steel or a heat resistant, non contaminating plastic resin. They must be FDA or USDA approved and easy to clean and sanitize. Materials like some hard plastics or metal lack the flexibility needed to convey, which requires the belt to bend, as they are on a continuous loop around two sets of rollers.In these situations, small parts are interlocked together or woven in order to bend and twist. However, these tend to have holes or cracks and are not smooth or water tight. They are not made for carrying small or irregularly shaped objects as well as products in bags, which could sag or fall through the cracks.
What are some of the funniest and most clever advertisements?
I have been collecting ads for the last 7 years. Here go some of the best ones. Most of these are very cleverly executed. Enjoy! What Goes Around Comes Around - Stop the Iraq War (See how they drove the point)World No Tobacco DayA spark is all it takes. A message from the Makati City Fire StationMcDonald's - Open at NightGive Trucks More RoomThe Backseat is No Safer - Belt UpOn Stuttering WWF - Earth HourIf a tree falls, we all fallFedEx - Quick DeliveryWonderbra adsFoot Cream for Sexy HealsFitness adAirport Bus Service Listerine: Sermon Pepsi Light If you don't move, you will get fat Ads for Aesthesis Clinic Ads for Veja - A Brazilian Magazine; The Message: Get Both Sides (These ads were made a few years back, when the subjects were in news) Education Loans Yellow PagesPassive Smoking KillsStop Global WarmingSave Trees. Save Wild LifeCNN's ad - on Breaking NewsTogether we can save the WhaleUNICEF ad promoting Education for Girls in Islamic Countries Smoker's Room in an OfficeBeat Breast Cancer with regular self-examGive a hand to wildlifePlant more treesEvery year, two million girls suffer the pain of genital mutilationWhen you educate a girl, you educate a family.Don't drink and driveSmoking isn't just suicide; it is murder.Don't drink and drive - ad released by Mumbai PoliceAdopt a childBooks that don't get around DIEEvery time you buy a pirated book, you disrespect its authorReading The Economist would make you `brainy'Check this out on the importance of polio immunization. The medium itself becomes the message in this ad:Check this brilliant series of ads when the Buenos Aires Zoo was kept open in night also. Ephydrol - Get rid of deadly foot odorWMFKnifes - Sharper Than You Think
Is there a bomb that can literally destroy this planet?
I think there might be a way with current technology of humankind to wreck our own species. Here is the outline of the plot:Of course you need a huge Tsar bomba (50 MT hydrogen bomb) class bomb. But it is more a matter of where than what. Here is where:Above shows the super reservoir and the magma chamber under the Yellowstone National Park. It erupts on the average once every 600,000 years and the last time it did it was some 640,000 years ago (yes it is overdue). Note the magma reservoir that is filled with magma. A super bomb blast by a crazy maniac theoretically can cause fissures between the magma chamber and the reservoir and trigger a volcanic event.So lets put aside the jokes and few serious words. Geologists have been studying the Yellowstone for sometime and perhaps there is a need for US government to take their alarms more seriously. I was intrigued by the 2005 movie Supervolcano that discusses this scenario.In the movie plot a sequence of eruptions unzips the caldera. The eruption scale is VEI scale. The Yellow stone has potential of releasing 25000 Km3 of volcanic ash and potentially wrecking life on Earth. A category VEI8 eruption is like 1000 Km3 of ejecta. The frequency of VEI8 event is 2 per 100,000 years and there have been 47 recorded in history. A VEI9 eruption will eject 10,000+ volcanic material but is so rare that evidence may be covered by geology. Yellowstone has theoretically the potential to do that 2.5x larger. That will be an eruption that goes on for weeks or months. I recommend seeing the movie. Better not spoil it for you.
What was your final year mechanical engineering project and how was it unique?
My final year project was based on simulation of Investment casting using a software. We used simulation to find the regions of casting that could be affected by defects like hotspots.I came across several interesting projects during the 4 years of my engineering. Here are a few amazing ones:We once made a simple pneumatic gun. It could shoot paintballs, paper balls or pretty much anything that could go in that barrel. haha! Sounds cool, right? Me and my friends were addicted to the swooshing sound it made while shooting. This is how it looked like:We once made a hovercraft which could be controlled by any android phone using a bluetooth module. Instead of using BLDCs we used simple DC motors. Thats how it looked like:A friend of mine made a crossbow.I once got a chance to coordinate an event at our college and participants had to make bottle rockets. A team made this:I know one cannot consider any of these for the final year projects. But they are cool and they show that the projects are not just meant for final years. You can make things just for having fun!