Elon Musk is a man of all trades when it comes to technology. While the eccentric billionaire wants to revolutionize road traffic with his Tesla electric cars and colonize Mars with his space company SpaceX, he is working on the expansion of tunnel infrastructure with his company, The Boring Company.
The company has a goal to build the tunnel infrastructure necessary to enable fast, safe, and comfortable transportation, including Loop and Hyperloop. According to Musk, tunnels will form the world’s most important transportation infrastructure in the future. For this purpose, the company has launched a contest called “Not-a-Boring Competition” that challenges teams to come up with the fastest tunnel-digging solutions that can beat the snail.
The team, which can dig the 30-meter tunnel with a cross-sectional area of 0.2 square meters in the fastest and most successful way, will win the competition. In order to make the competition more exciting and stimulate the imagination of the participants, there are three winning categories. The categories include the fastest to complete the tunnel, the fastest to complete the tunnel and a driving surface through which a remote-controlled Tesla will drive, and the most accurate guidance system that keeps the tunnel on target.
The Not-a-Boring Competition will be open to teams of engineers, individual specialists, or companies from different countries. It is scheduled for spring 2021.
Through the competition, Musk’s goal is to find faster and more effective, more economical digging technologies and, as a result, feasibly build a large network of tunnels to unclog road traffic in large cities.