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by King-Aaron22 hours ago |
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upvoteby j4k0bfr21 hours ago|
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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.
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upvoteby King-Aaron21 hours ago|
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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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upvoteby j4k0bfr16 hours ago|
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Ah I see. Yeah looks like it's pretty much just RCS for cars. Space landing systems are pretty well understood from the rocketry side afaik. The hard parts seem to really be around autonomous landing site selection [1][2] in novel environments. We'll have to see if the Roadster can do significant in-flight landing manoeuvrers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IM-1#Lunar_landing [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuto-R_Mission_1#Landing_att...

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upvoteby King-Aaron15 hours ago|
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The novel thing is atmospheric compressed air RCS, but even so I’m not talking moon landings.

This feels like a delivery mechanism to drop hardware from terrestrial orbit. At least the last leg after parachutes

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upvoteby joquarky21 hours ago|
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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?

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upvoteby King-Aaron20 hours ago|
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...why would you assume it would be destroyed? What even is your point?

I think you are on an entirely different page.

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