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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

Although I’m also not expecting 1 million people on Mars in my lifetime, I think you’re assuming SpaceX never gets close to the Musk price goals.

You might be right to do that — I’m no rocket scientist — but the target price would get a million people there for $200 billion, not your $5 quadrillion.

Yes, I also expect the first few thousand to be in easily damaged domes. I also expect them to bring some of The Boring Company equipment with them, as it is part-owned by SpaceX and the stated raison d'être of TBC being pointless in a future of fully self-driving cars.

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The other factor is that Musk has nothing better to spend his money on. With Tesla + SpaceX + Boring + Neuralink he'll likely be a trillionaire by the time Mars colonization is full swing. Even if the price was $2T instead of $200B, Musk might be able to fund most of this himself.

How are tunnels pointless in a future of self driving cars, the opposite is true, tunnels make even more sense when cars drive themselves.

Self driving cars done right will be able to do full speed while literally, not metaphorically, touching bumpers.

Traffic jams with human drivers happen spontaneously when the cars get close enough that overcompensation turns into a negative spiral.

So in the city of the future you gone have 1000s of self driving cars going full speed threw the city? It makes much more sense to open up the city for people and ban cars for the most part. Move the transportation under ground.

Please, millions.

The roads are already there, electric cars are quiet, road trains are even more efficient.

I am no fan of American city design, having half encircled Davis CA on foot, having found the suddenly-terminating sidewalks in Salt Lake City, and having walked the really boring route from San Jose railway station to the hotel in the top left corner of the Apple Maps icon.

(NYC is surprisingly pedestrian friendly though).

In Europe we are already trying to make more space for pedestrians specially around the city center. The value of the land above ground is incredible. Freeing up those spaces from cars makes sense and is incredibly nice.

I know, check my profile ;)

But:

1. Musk doesn’t live in Europe, he set up TBC while stuck in a traffic jam in Los Angeles.

2. Solid car trains moving at full speed (whatever that is for the road, 20 kph for residential or much higher than the current rules for highways) use less land area than any other traffic, so some lanes can become bicycle only or whatever.

3. They can “perfectly” obey traffic lights and give way to pedestrians

4. Raised walkways are cheaper than tunnels

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