Cheaper? A nuclear machine that melts rock and probably doesn't exist?

I'm not convinced that the video you linked on sheepletv above the "underground alien bases" one is the most reliable info.

Sure, ridiculing such information is easy, especially when you describe it as you have, emphasizing the easiest targets for ridicule. If your intent was to ridicule the information, I get your comment makes sense. But, IMHO, that's not a very substantive contribution for HN. IMHO, it would have been more worthwhile to highlight the less-easy-to-ridicule aspects of the page, such as the quotes from, and discussion about, the Los Alamos patents for NTBM. Please don't interpret this as an attack on you, I'm just trying to rightly do the information justice, encourage substantive discussion. Also, to point out that if your goal is to discover useful information, then it does not work to discredit the valid content of a comment or page, by measuring all its info by the standard of the easiest to ridicule parts.

Finally, from my point of view, getting your ridicule feedback hurts because my aim is to contribute to substantive discussion here, and I don't want to feel discouraged from posting something substantive because it might also have info that could be cherrypicked for ridicule, then letting me feel like I wasted my effort contributing because the info was later unfairly presented. I don't want to feel like I have to do extra work "defending" the original effort to contribute, against such ridicule. So, please, before you rush to ridicule something, really take a look to see if there is substantive content there, and refrain from misrepresenting it, thanks.

The point that tim333 is trying to make is that the source you're citing is wildly unreliable. Take a look at their home page -- just on a first glance, I see:

* Several videos about Pizzagate (and I don't mean critical examinations, either)

* A number of anti-Semitic images ("Jews control the banks", etc)

* A video literally titled "Hitler Survived WWII & Occult Nazi Scientists Developed VRIL Haunebu Foo-Craft (UFO’s) at Secret Antarctic Base-211"

* Another video literally titled "Illuminati Hip Hop Blood Sacrifices Exposed"

* A video about how Christmas is a "Satanic Illuminati Holiday"

* And this video

It's not a great stretch to say that their description of a "nuclear tunnel boring machine" is every bit as absurd and untrue as the other videos they distribute.

You just did the thing I suggested was insubstantial and said hurts and I didn't like. Please stop. Also it's a logical error to judge a claim by the site it's on, or by the claims surrounding it.

I linked to that page and specified NTBM. You could have substantially commented on the Los Alamos patents and their discussion on that page. But you chose to go off that page and to emphasize easy-to-ridicule parts. Please don't do that, thank you.

> You just did the thing I suggested was insubstantial and said hurts and I didn't like. Please stop. Also it's a logical error to judge a claim by the site it's on, or by the claims surrounding it.

It might be a logical error, but it's not a mistake. If someone tells you lie after lie after lie, and then says something new, whose truth you can't immediately evaluate, the sensible thing to do is to think: this is also probably a lie.

That's called confirmation bias and people do it all the time.

It just didn't work as a strategy if you actually wanted the find the truth. That's one thing this is about here.

The other thing I think you missed was the emotional context of these comments. I'm clearly asking for support and help to make HN welcoming, by not misrepresenting or cherry picking easy-to-ridicule info. It hurts when they do that and I don't like it. Please don't do it, don't ignore the people behind the comments, and don't quote this

> You just did the thing I suggested was insubstantial and said hurts and I didn't like. Please stop.

pretending that you've contradicted this, and made it somehow okay. You haven't and it's not.

Ah ok though I felt the 'cheaper' bit was somewhat unproven.

Considering the name of the company, maybe they have invented a radical new way to reduce boring costs?

When I am drilling holes for pipework I use some attachment to the power tool that drills one guide hole in the middle and a big pip-sized disk. The material inside that disk is not ground up to pieces, it comes out of the hole whole.

At the moment boring machines do not work like that, a conveyor belt of small pieces comes out. What if A380 fuselage sized pieces of rock came out instead and were conveyed off to the coast for coastal defence purposes, or even land reclamation? Carrying objects weighing thousands of tonnes to the sea is not simple but the amount of material excavated the hard way - ground to pieces first - would be significantly lower.

Maybe they have a 'coring machine' rather than a 'boring machine'?

I think they experimented with these coring designs at some point.

Also, if you accept the assumption that energy will get cheaper in the future, some boring project may become financially feasible.

It's quite possible they could reduce the cost if they found a way to pipe the excavated rock into surrounding regions of less dense rock, through pipes drilled at intervals along the tunnel. Meaning the excavated rock never needs to go up to the surface, it can just be digested and fed as a slurry into neighbouring areas.

He has said he thinks he can reduce the costs by a factor of ten, but except for having spare parts on hand to reduce downtime I don't think he has been specific about his ideas. He bought a conventional boring machine recently (I don't know if it has been delivered yet) to get more data.