My brother was in town and we were trying to kill some time so I decided to take him down to Hawthorne where Tesla's design center and Space X is. You don't realize how many cookie jars Musk has his hands in until you're walking around this place. Come on a journey with me. Or don't. I don't fucking care.
The first thing you notice when pulling up to the campus is a giant pipe run down the side of the road. If you didn't know what it was you wouldn't think anything of it until you saw the SpaceX logo on the side. This is the Hyperloop test track they built.
If you saw the video Tesla made about testing their underground tunnel vehicle sleds, that's actually the inside of this hyperloop test track and the sled is the pusher they used for the various hyperloop vehicle designs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXf5mZQ0Jts
Moving on! I've been here before so I was really excited to see the Boring Machine as that's something new that I haven't seen. If you don't know what the boring machine is, basically one day Elon tweeted that he was going to build a tunnel under LA because he hated traffic. Everyone had a good laugh and then he doubled down and said he was serious. He said he'd call it the boring company because, you know... tunnel boring. A bunch of stories on the internet said that a giant tunnel boring machine showed up on the Hawthorne campus. Naturally I needed to see this.
And so we saw a security guard and decided to ask him if it was visible and where we could find it. He told us there really wasn't anything to see but that it was across the street next to the parking garage. And off we went. When you get to the corner of the campus there's a large rocket standing up on display. Again, if you don't know what you're looking at it might not seem exciting but it's actually the first Falcon 9 rocket to successfully return and land on a barge. Pictures don't do it justice. It is imposing.
A quick hop across the street and we were at a full blown construction site. Again, you don't know what's going on and you just think this is one of a million mixed use luxury residential buildings going up in the city. Upon further inspection...
This one is my favorite because you're literally watching the fantasies of a mad billionaire come to life. It's an entire, legitimate contraction site with boring contractors digging a hole to drop a boring machine in so a space company can dig a tunnel for cars that will help it's CEO get to the airport faster. BRILLIANT.
It is all kind of awe inducing when you see it though. In one campus you have Tesla's design center, where the future of cars as we know it has arguably been sent down a wildly different path. You have Space X, the first private company to put a rocket in space and the first anybody to land a rocket back on the ground and re-use it. You have the boring company, which is apparently an honest attempt to alleviate traffic. And you have the hyperloop test track, which very well could change transportation as we know it. It's amazing to think that this is all tied back to one guy.
The first thing you notice when pulling up to the campus is a giant pipe run down the side of the road. If you didn't know what it was you wouldn't think anything of it until you saw the SpaceX logo on the side. This is the Hyperloop test track they built.
If you saw the video Tesla made about testing their underground tunnel vehicle sleds, that's actually the inside of this hyperloop test track and the sled is the pusher they used for the various hyperloop vehicle designs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXf5mZQ0Jts
Moving on! I've been here before so I was really excited to see the Boring Machine as that's something new that I haven't seen. If you don't know what the boring machine is, basically one day Elon tweeted that he was going to build a tunnel under LA because he hated traffic. Everyone had a good laugh and then he doubled down and said he was serious. He said he'd call it the boring company because, you know... tunnel boring. A bunch of stories on the internet said that a giant tunnel boring machine showed up on the Hawthorne campus. Naturally I needed to see this.
And so we saw a security guard and decided to ask him if it was visible and where we could find it. He told us there really wasn't anything to see but that it was across the street next to the parking garage. And off we went. When you get to the corner of the campus there's a large rocket standing up on display. Again, if you don't know what you're looking at it might not seem exciting but it's actually the first Falcon 9 rocket to successfully return and land on a barge. Pictures don't do it justice. It is imposing.
A quick hop across the street and we were at a full blown construction site. Again, you don't know what's going on and you just think this is one of a million mixed use luxury residential buildings going up in the city. Upon further inspection...
This one is my favorite because you're literally watching the fantasies of a mad billionaire come to life. It's an entire, legitimate contraction site with boring contractors digging a hole to drop a boring machine in so a space company can dig a tunnel for cars that will help it's CEO get to the airport faster. BRILLIANT.
It is all kind of awe inducing when you see it though. In one campus you have Tesla's design center, where the future of cars as we know it has arguably been sent down a wildly different path. You have Space X, the first private company to put a rocket in space and the first anybody to land a rocket back on the ground and re-use it. You have the boring company, which is apparently an honest attempt to alleviate traffic. And you have the hyperloop test track, which very well could change transportation as we know it. It's amazing to think that this is all tied back to one guy.
