Elon Musk wants to sell giant Lego kits of dug-up rock

Thomas McMullan Read more March 27, 2018

Never one to shy away from a surprise new line of business – whether it’s flamethrowers or baseball caps – Elon Musk has said his Boring Company will sell “Lego-like” kits of interlocking bricks, made from the excavated earth dug up by his company’s tunnel-making machines.

Elon Musk wants to sell giant Lego kits of dug-up rock

In a tweet, the SpaceX and Tesla head said the latest Boring Company “merch” would be kits of rock that “you can used to create sculptures and buildings”. The rock will be bored in the middle, which will cut out some of the weight, although they will apparently still be able to withstand California’s earthquakes.

Musk went on to say that the “first kit” would be ancient Egyptian themed, with the suggestion being that the excavated rock could be used to build recreations of the pyramids and the Sphinx. As always with Musk, it’s hard to tell how much he’s joking. Although this is the man who made £5.3 million from selling branded flamethrowers and – let’s not forget – sent a car into space.

There’s no detail about how much all this rock will cost, although the Boring Company has been clear for a while that it intends to reuse the earth it’s excavating. In company’s FAQs claim it is “investigating technologies that will recycle the earth into useful bricks to be used to build structures”.

“This is not a new concept, as buildings have been constructed from Earth for thousands of years including, according to recent evidence, the Pyramids,” the website reads.

“These bricks can potentially be used as a portion of the tunnel lining itself, which is typically built from concrete,” “Since concrete production accounts for 4.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, earth bricks would reduce both environmental impact and tunneling costs.”

The Boring Company’s eventual aim is to create a network of subterranean tunnels that could be used with a hyperloop-style system to scoot people around cities at speeds reaching 200mph. So far, the company is digging trial tunnels in California and Maryland, with aims to create a network beneath Los Angeles.

Lego recently revealed plan to create an environmentally friendly kit of pieces, made from plant-based plastics. Perhaps a partnership with Musk could be on the cards. After all, what’s more natural than big chunks of rock?