I hate Tesla for their politics, broken promises, and all the drama that we are all aware and tired of hearing about. That being said, that was the coolest damn thing I've ever seen a car do.

I don't think there's any doubt in anyone's mind that it'll never make production like this, but what I see as being demonstrated is a suborbital lander/off-world ground transport concept that can work in low gravity environments etc. This will aid autonomous delivery vehicles etc to be dropped from low orbit and find their own landing sites, and then drive to location.

I wonder how many maimed kerbals are stranded around the space X facility while testing this.

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j4k0bfr 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Very cool stuff but all the "extra-terrestrial" stuff is complete bunk. This thing wouldn't survive Max-Q, let alone any kind of landing that isn't on a clean slab of concrete. It's a cool rich person toy, no other notes.

	▲	King-Aaron 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You miss my point. They're demonstrating a landing system, it's just wrapped up in a car to fool the idiots that are going to pre-purchase it again so they can use that money to build more space X technology. The car is just a façade. Edit: And to expand on this. Owners of GM T.50' say they can't use the ground effect fan anywhere in public due to the debris it picks up and throws, and are ineffective on anything but near perfect roads. So that's not impressive to me. And the jet boosters are also ridiculous, there is not real-world application where you could use them outside of completely closed environments with no one nearby. It's a huge investment into reaction thrusters for a car that would never, ever be used - unless it was to demonstrate thruster technology for another reason. i.e. Space X.

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joquarky an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

What is this wonderful "autonomous delivery vehicle" capable of delivering?

Also, assuming the delivery vehicle is destroyed at the end of each "delivery", what will it cost?

	▲	King-Aaron 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		...why would you assume it would be destroyed? What even is your point? I think you are on an entirely different page.