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Elon Musk highlights Boring Company’s TBM innovations

Credit: The Boring Company/X

Elon Musk recently highlighted one of the most notable innovations that have been developed by The Boring Company, his tunneling startup. As per Musk, the Boring Co.’s technologies allow tunnel boring machines (TBMs) to start digging with no prior site preparation. 

Earlier this month, The Boring Company posted an image of its Prufrock-3 TBM undergoing final checks on “The Monster,” which was already tilted downwards. The Monster is a machine that is capable of launching and retrieving Prufrock, allowing The Boring Company to start excavating tunnels very quickly.

As noted by Elon Musk in his recent post, the capability to start digging tunnels with no prior site preparation is a “really big deal.” While such innovations will indeed make the construction of The Boring Company’s transport tunnels quicker, some users on X speculated that the technology may also be used by Musk’s companies for future Mars missions.

Musk, after all, recently noted that he expects uncrewed Starship flights to be possible within the next two years. When asked about the payload of Starship’s uncrewed flights, Musk noted that the spacecraft would be transporting Tesla Cybertrucks and Optimus robots to start.

Using Prufrock machines to dig tunnels in Mars would certainly be an interesting idea, but SpaceX, Tesla, and The Boring Company would have to work very hard on the logistics of transporting a TBM to the red planet. Musk, after all, has previously noted that Starship could support payloads of 250 to 300 tons to orbit in expendable mode. The Boring Company’s Purfrock-4 TBM weighs close to 400 tons.

The Boring Company has very ambitious long-term targets for its Prufrock TBM series. As per the tunneling startup, Prufrock is eventually expected to achieve a digging speed greater than 1 mile per week. So far, The Boring Company appears to be building Prufrock-4 and Prufrock-5, both of which will likely exceed the performance of Prufrock-3, which was used in Tesla’s Giga Texas’ tunnel.

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Elon Musk highlights Boring Company’s TBM innovations
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