Elon Musk wants to dig a new tunnel near his spaceport in Texas

But he will have to pay for it himself.

Vision of the hammer

Among the local Texans who live near SpaceX’s Boca Chica Starbase facility, one of the biggest complaints is that the company frequently blocks the highway when shipping rocket parts or shuts it down completely for launches, cutting off potential travelers to the area.

As the saying goes, for the man who has a tunneling business, everything looks like, well, a great place for a tunnel. Representatives from Elon Musk’s The Boring Company met with representatives from Cameron County, Texas to set them up on a new tunnel from the southern tip of South Padre Island to the northern end of the beach by Boca Chica, The Brownsville Herald reports, claiming it would allow others to bypass the blocked freeway and continue to travel to parts of the beach that are not closed for safety reasons.

Uh, maybe

The tunnel would not help SpaceX operations – apparently the rocket parts will all remain above the ground. Instead, it would allow SpaceX commuters living on the Coast Island to cut much of their commute while still allowing the public to get to the beach when SpaceX blocked or closed the freeway.

However, the tunnel can be extremely difficult to dig. As Ars Technica notes, South Padre Island and Boca Chica Beach are divided by an active navigation channel. This means the tunnel would have to be dug much deeper than average – a major test for The Boring Company.

Much work needs to be done to determine if the tunnel is feasible, and SpaceX is already in the middle of an environmental review for its Starship launch site, so it’s not clear if this tunnel will ever exist. And then there is the question of money. As Cameron County officials told the Brownsville HeraldThe Boring Company should not expect any financial help from the government if it is to start digging.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s proposal: a tunnel from South Padre Island to Boca Chica beach [The Brownsville Herald]

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