David Kallio retweetledi
Virginia Tech's Diggeridoos Tunnel Digging Team are world champions!
They won first place at the Not-a-Boring Competition, run by Elon Musk's The Boring Company.
Over 8 days, their tunnel boring machine dug further than any other into wet Texas clay, in a downpour, against 7 university teams from 3 countries.
This win has been years in the making.
They took the fastest launch design award in 2021 and climbed from there: top 5, then 2nd, then the Innovation Award and 2nd again last year.
Each time refining and improving on a shoestring against better-funded international teams.
This year, in the worst conditions the competition’s ever seen, they brought the title home to Blacksburg.
I'll keep saying it: I don't care what grade you made in Differential Equations. I care about what you did on a team like this.
These students poured hundreds of hours into this because they wanted to help crack one of modern engineering’s hardest problems.
The bigger picture is why this competition matters so much.
@elonmusk started The Boring Company after one too many “soul-destroying” LA traffic jams.
He argues cities have maxed out their surface space and the only direction left is down. His vision is for vast underground networks that move people and freight around at superfast speeds, and reclaim the surface space back from cars and trucks.
But current tunnelling machines are notoriously slow and expensive, often moving slower than a garden snail once you factor in setup, maintenance, and muck removal (the competition is branded as "Beating the Snail”).
The student challenge exists to crowdsource the breakthroughs that will finally make tunneling 10x faster and cheaper, finding the next-generation of engineers who’ll crack it.
The Diggeridoos are those engineers.
My company @totalshield_llc sponsors this amazing team.
If you run a technical company and haven't looked at the competition teams at your local university, you're missing one of the best hiring pipelines in the country.
Career fairs don't show you who performs under pressure, but this sure does.
Congratulations, Diggeridoos. Go @virginia_tech Hokies!
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