Tunnelling Machine?

After reading several threads on ATS about a reputed machine that bored tunnels between the various underground bases, i came across this photo on the James Casbolt site,



www.jamescasbolt.com...

The site says the photo was reportedly taken at the Dulce facility too.

Probable nuclear powered drill used to make underground tunnels and bases. This photo is reported to have been taken at the Dulce area in the New Mexico desert.

I was just wondering, Ive never seen this photo before, has anyone? and whats everyones opinions on it?

I'd like to believe it, but with such a sensitive/secret technology, would they really pose for a photo with it? and would they really slap a huge 'Air Force' sign on the side?

any thoughts?

well known hoax. It's an edited picture of a normal non us airforce non nuclear powered drill.

And wasn't taken in the "Dulce area in the New Mexico desert".

I would ignore anything on that site if it presents this picture as proof of anything.

Nope defenatly a tunneling machine. They have those, I saw a documentery on the making of Chyanne Mountain once, Those machines are pretty impressive. Now a nuclear one I don't know about that but a regular desil powered drill sure thing you betcha.

Now what we have here ...

it's a standard diesel powered Tunnel Boring Machine, used by the Air Force to bore the tunnels that are used to place nuclear devices at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. Actually their are all sizes of Tunnel Boring Machines, most are driven by a Diesel powered Electric Generator much like a locomotive engine.

They are used to make tunnels for all kinds of porposes, service tunels, placement tunnels (which are backfilled) utility tunnels and of course the famous < sarcasm on> alien underground DUMB tunnels. < sarcasm off>

Nothing to worry about, in fact the County of Los Angeles MTA just aired footage of one of these opening a tunnel in the Boyle Heights area on the local station about a week ago. TBM!

I understand that Thelma and Louise are still buried just north of the North Hollywood MTA Station awaiting funding.

Each TBM weighs more than 2 million pounds and stretches 344 feet. The diameter of each tunnel is 21 feet. As the machines were advancing, pre-cast concrete tunnel lining were installed in the tunnels.

The amount of earth excavated from the two tunnels could cover an entire football field from sideline to sideline and end-zone to end-zone 15 stories high.

Eastside construction workers have logged nearly 1.3 million hours with no lost-time injuries, setting a record that has astonished long-time construction safety executives since starting work on the project in July 2004.

“This is an incredible accomplishment and speaks volumes to our commitment in making safety priority number one,” said Metro CEO Roger Snoble.

The Tunnel Boring Machines, nicked-named Lola and Vicki, were custom-built in Germany for Metro by Herrenknecht at a cost of $10 million each. Construction of the Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension is being done by Eastside LRT Constructors, a joint venture of Washington Group International, Obayashi Corporation and Shimmick Construction Company.

added exerpt!

[edit on 26-11-2006 by 2stepsfromtop]

Thanks for the info guys,

So, If such a machine was nuclear powered, could it be the same size as the one here, or would it have to be much bigger?

Wouldn't that be hell of a dangerous to have nuclear powered machinery underground? I haven't heard of anything like it before!

Originally posted by ukmicky1980
So, If such a machine was nuclear powered, could it be the same size as the one here, or would it have to be much bigger?

Yes, it would be much bigger because of the containment unit for the reactor, the cooling unit, heat exchange unit and of course the really cool kind of drill head for it. While there was research and investment for such a creature back in the sixties/seventies there has been little to report since. Los Alamos Nuclear Labs actually holds a few patents for a machine, but it appears nothing came of it, except to fuel a whole bunch of conjecture and conspiracy theory stuff.

I'm not an expert, but it probably is a legitimate tunneling machine. I've seen them before. They used one here in the city when they were constructing an underground transit system to dig the tunnels. It looked kind of like that, too.

Its just a tunnelling machine.

The fact that the militray owns one isnt suprising in the least. I'd expect them to own a few of them. How else are you going to dig tunnels efficiently?



Outside of that, the interesting thing about tunneling machines is most of them have to be built on site, and are custom designed for each purpose.



And, no, it aint nuclear.

I thought the limitation for TBM's are the cutting heads not the power powering them. IMO, a Nuclear powered one would be useless?

It takes power to provide enough torque to turn the head, bigger heads=more cutting bits=more torque=more power. The real limitation is removing all the soil and rock, which is where the Nuclear Powered Subterrene stories come in handy. The legend is that the Subterrene melts the rock into a liquid and it is then used to line the sides of the tunnel, reducing the amount of waste material by over 90%.

Oh! It also has a speed of over 6MPH through dense rock!

It makes glass lined tunnels between Alien and human underground bases!

Ooh! It looks like a robotic mole on acid!

Funny thing, they never say how the waste heat is handled.

Fact: If you were going to drill a tunnel between two bases, 100 miles apart, you would have to conduct an underground survey of the path to be sure that you weren't running into an underground lake or a massive chasm that would swallow your very expensive beasty up. The survey would require ground penetrating radar and sonic imaging of the deep soil.