Elon Musk’s TBC has published a video on Twitter of Prufrock-1 emerging from the ground near Resorts World on February 5. Prufrock-1’s latest achievement connects the Las Vegas Convention Center to Resorts World via the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) Loop and the Vegas Loop.
TBC estimates that the Vegas Loop will accommodate up to 57,000 passengers per hour. It will have up to 51 stations along The Strip, including the Allegiant Stadium. The LVCC Loop has three stations located in the Convention Center complex. During the tech event CES 2022, held in January, the LVCC Loop transported 15,000-17,000 each day. The network is being constructed without any public funding.
Prufrock is designed to ‘porpoise’ – launching directly from the surface, mining underground, and re-emerging on completion. The TBM can begin tunnelling within 48 hours of arriving on site and no shafts are required for launch or retrieval.
Prufrock is designed to tunnel at a speed greater than one mile per week – six times faster than TBC’s previous generation TBM (Godot+). The medium-term goal is for Prufrock to exceed 1/10 of human walking speed, or seven miles per day.
