Digging underground tunnels to serve new forms of high-speed travel, utility, and freight has been the long-term goal of The Boring Company, founded as a spinoff of SpaceX in 2016. The task of “boring” – a clever pun which tips to the central task of boring underground tunnels – expanded to a student TBC competition in 2021. That competition pitted groups from college and universities around the world to design, build, and test tunnel boring machines (TBMs) to fast-track the innovation.

Virginia Tech has fielded a team each year the competition has occurred, naming their group the “Diggeridoos.” They have consistently taken home awards, including:

  • Fastest Launch Design, 2021
  • Top five finalist in 2023 (there was no competition in 2022)
  • First in the US, 2024

In the 2025 competition held on March 22-30 in Bastrop Texas, the Diggeridoos continued their winning tradition. At the end of the competition they had placed second overall, repeated as first in the US, and also took home the Innovation Award.

The Diggeridoo TBM uses a custom-built cutter face integrated with rollers and rippers to tear through the ground with 150,000 lbs of force. (To put this into perspective, a Boeing 737 engine produces 14,500 pounds of force.) The machine is housed in a steel tube which cuts and breaks its way through the ground to create a round tunnel roughly 2 feet in diameter.

The team put their machine into action in the Texas competition, testing many systems that could only be tried once they arrived. By Wednesday, they had completed all but one inspection, and improved upon their past performance: where previously they dug six inches, this year they pushed to seven feet, two inches.

Chris Johnston, a junior mechanical engineering major from Michigan, has been a project lead on the team the past two years. There have been a lot of rallying points as the build has progressed, and a phrase spoken by Johnston during one session describes their unbreakable spirit: dig or die.

"It was surreal to see what I've been working on for three years to finally shine,” said Johnston. “I don't just mean the machine though, I also mean the team itself. To see the culture that we have built, a team that embodies the mantra of ‘dig or die,’ come to life there in Texas was empowering for me and simply mind-blowing." 

 

The Virginia Tech Diggeridoos took home the Innovation Award, #2 overall, and #1 in the US at a March 2025 competition. Photo courtesy of Chris Johnston.
The Virginia Tech Diggeridoos took home the Innovation Award, #2 overall, and #1 in the US at a March 2025 competition. Photo courtesy of Chris Johnston.