Comment by flurdy

7 years ago

I think people are not as aware of this: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1197627433970589696

"Tesla Cybertruck (pressurized edition) will be official truck of Mars"

They have designed it to drive on Mars.

64 comments

flurdy

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danimal88  7 years ago

"[Designed to drive on mars]"

Premature Optimization if I have ever heard of it.

  • swiley  7 years ago

    I hope it doesn’t use touch controls.

    Having to remove a space suite so you can adjust the atmospheric controls sounds stupid.

    • gpm  7 years ago

      If you're in a space suit... Why do you care about the cars atmospheric controls?

      Anyways, SpaceX space suits are compatible with touchscreens... And that seems unlikely to change given how easy it is to make them that way.

      1 reply →

slg  7 years ago

I think that is a bad joke rather than a legitimate plan to pressurize the vehicle. The fact that it is coming from Elon's Twitter and not Tesla's is a big indicator in my opinion. Either way, it isn't a great sign that we can't tell for sure.

  • mrandish  7 years ago

    I think it will be partly true. Assuming Elon's Mars missions happen, it seems reasonable they'll need a vehicle at some point and I expect that vehicle will use some elements from the CyberTruck design.

    • slg  7 years ago

      I just can't imagine them needing this type of vehicle anytime soon. The first car on the moon was unpressurized because the only real benefit to pressurizing the vehicle is if the astronauts don't need to be wearing pressurized suits inside. That would either mean that there are car sized airlocks to travel between or that the astronauts will be traveling long enough distances in the car that it provides a real comfort benefit for them to take off some of their suits. Neither of those is likely to happen on the first trips to Mars.

      Even then, this truck doesn't appear particularly light compared to your average vehicle. It also has a ton of added weight from things that would be wasted on Mars like huge acceleration, unnecessary top speed, and the ability to withstand vehicular accidents that would never occur on Mars. Maybe Tesla tries to preserve the look of this car for whatever they may or may not eventually put on Mars, but I doubt it is going to be close to being this car.

      8 replies →

ComputerGuru  7 years ago

That’s just a marketing stunt. It would be sheer stupidity to actually have the same design goals for both terrestrial and Martian vehicles.

  • gpm  7 years ago

    Designing stuff is really expensive, using things made for Earth with minimal modifications really makes a lot of sense.

    The steel is cheap on mars too (initially), since you ship it there anyways as part of the cargo starships, which aren't return to earth (since the energy to make fuel is initially really expensive on mars). Manufacture it in Mars and your basically just talking about shipping the batteries, motors, and a small amount of electronics (and machinery you will need anyways).

PaulHoule  7 years ago

The moon would be good enough.

The first thing I want to send to the moon is a bulldozer, you could make one based on that platform.

Also it would be fun to road trip on the moon at the right speed to stay in the sun all month.

giarc  7 years ago

I think that was a joke.

  • dehrmann  7 years ago

    The SEC should have a chat with Elon about that. He already put one of his cars in space, and owns a company trying to get to Mars. That puts it at about 80% joke in my mind.

  • keane  7 years ago

    I’m not so sure. As Elon said “We’re going to be using the same alloy in the Starship rocket and in the Cybertruck”. The Tesla truck itself might be a way to subsidize the SpaceX rocket development (or vice versa). It sounds like technology between the two entities is being shared already.

hef19898  7 years ago

So no product update or facelift of Cybertruck until we need pickups on Mars? It should be the longest running car model in history by then!

  • kanaba  7 years ago

    3 years? If they manage to launch in the 2022 window I would imagine a rover will be included.

    • hef19898  7 years ago

      So, the idea is to use a presurized Cybertruck as a, I assume manned, rover on mars in 2025. So there will be a manned mission to mars in 2025 supposedly conducted by SpaceX. Otherwise the economics of using something as large and heavy as a Cybertruck is just not feasible.

      6 replies →

Kye  7 years ago

It will probably look better in the context of the Martian landscape, set in the foreground with the first colony in the background.

On Earth, it's ugly.

AndrewBissell  7 years ago

If there's one thing I want in a truck it's the ability to drive on a planet which I will never actually visit.