Here is a good reason why some sort of excavating device or bombs would be a nice addition to the game. I decided to expand my base into a mountain which required lots and lots of excavating. Heres how much.
48 plots total.
Each plot is 8x8x8 which contains 512 blocks within.
512 blocks x 48 plots=24,576 total blocks that need to be excavated.
Using tools that break a block in 4 hits at an average speed of about 1.5 seconds per break that equals 36,864 seconds which equals 614 minutes which equals about 10.5 hours of straight mining. Yes I understand thats a pretty large section to be clearing out, but I cant help but think how nice it would be if I could just set off a small explosion to clear large chunks of it out quickly. But whether thats implemented into the game or not I’m having fun regardless of the method used. Just wanted to share the math with you guys.
There’s this ^^
And there is concept art for bombs somewhere… though they may be more for combat rather than mining =/
CAN… NOT… WAIT for this!!! 
Makes me miss the old explosive shot arrows! 1 arrow could clear a 4d area in an instant, and you could fire in fairly rapid succession. Crafting was a bit expensive since the explosive essence only dropped off 1/4 of spitters, but when you had a few hundred you felt you could blow up the whole gd world! 
24,000 is doable. Me and @endymion excavated about 4,000 clay from outside @Stretchious place last night, then realised what a mess we’d made, so continued to dig out the word ‘Sorry’ in the dirt.
Oh its absolutely doable, but as one person working on it it would take over 10 hours. We should just mining excavating parties. Next time I’ll offer some gem tools for whoever helps me clear out an area.
It took quite a bit of time to hollow out the mountain for my build. Every time I expand there is more digging. I must have gon through hundreds of hammers in the proses.
I know the feeling. But theres definitely a sense of satisfaction knowing you did all of that.
What planet is the build on @Cookviper? I might be able to strip mine a lot of that for you. I need starter planet Metamorphic and Sedimentary Rock.
Its behind my piranha plant in Pixel Gate on Solum, however…im almost done. Thanks for the offer though 
No worries! I’ll come check out your work soon enough. I do love your builds.
Thanks a lot. That is my desire, to build things others enjoy as much as I do.
Where was I when this was possible? Let’s say I had a little too much fun with explosive ammo at Pax East.
That’s why we built Pixel Gate “floating”, didn’t want to mess going down 2 blocks, just so the plots started on ground level. Now that the city is expanding, so much digging is being made to gather resources.
I dunno, this was during the Kovah Project days
There are a few threads that go in this direction of excavation machines. I think that is just a symptom of a problem that mining speed is unbearably slow.
Solution might be in increasing mining speeds to some reasonable values instead adding some more complicated concepts. And I’m all for machines, don’t get me wrong, I’d sure love to have them around doing their bidding 
I played Minecraft for a bit longer than two years, I thought that mining is slow in Minecraft (with low tier tools), I was very wrong, started a new world few days ago, stone tools felt like breeze compared to Boundless iron tools.
I played Boundless testing version a bit, wooden tools speed is giving me seizures, and they are required for lots of starting objectives. Hope that will be improved in future.
One thing to take care is ‘player investment’ though.
In another game I played (Ascent: The Space Game), everyone was building and trading on their own, and people complained that everything was too slow. However, once we got NPCs to hire and use for trading, the game suddenly became waaaay less fun!
Everything was less personal, no 1 on 1 trading happened anymore. No more working together to get something done (in the case of boundless, excavation). I think setting the bar ‘high’ for some things can promote cooperation. In Ascent you could build gates that connected star systems. These took millions of resources, and required many players to work together for many weeks or months to get this done. Even though the work really felt like ‘work’ and was boring at times (and thus was not perfect), the fact that it brought a lot of people closer together really added something to the game.
Let’s say you need something excavated. Why not try to get some people together to help you do it? Either paid or unpaid (keep everything you dig up!) or whatever. These things build community and could be fun!
That said, I myself also really really love automation. I’m not very creative, but I love automating things (really enjoyed doing logistics in Tekkit). Maybe one could make an excavator, but that you don’t actually get the resources that are mined? So basically it would just clear out a space, but without getting a benefit of resources? Too much automation can destroy the player economy and investment into the game.
Just my 2 cents!