This is part 1 of a two-part series that summarizes my recent tour of The Boring Company’s Bastrop, Texas facility.

I would like to thank The Boring Company, especially Nick, David and Lisa for setting up this tour and for showing me around a fascinating location! Also, to the many employees I got to meet and talk with, thank you for making the day so special!

In this video, we look around the Bastrop, Texas site and explore many of the facilities, functions and developments that are ongoing here.

Did you know The Boring Company spun off from SpaceX and shares the same first-principles methodology of looking at challenges and developing solutions and the iterative design approach that SpaceX has made famous with the development of the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Dragon Capsule and now the Starship system? These concepts drive The Boring Company and its employees forward as they try to solve traffic congestion, plan for high-speed “hyperloop” travel and in the longer-term, off-world tunneling operations!

At this site, we see the only production factory for Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMS) in the USA, and we are able to talk about some of the innovations they are pursuing to improve the overall efficiency and speed of tunneling, advancing the state of the art in this field where not much has truly changed on over 100 years!

In Part 1, we concentrate on the developments at this site, but in Part 2, we will further the discussion by looking at the tunneling operations at Tesla Giga Texas and discuss two fundamental objectives The Boring Company has in the iterative design process and the overarching goal of the company to meet their near, mid, and long term missions.