Comment by 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.
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.
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).
Designing a mass-production truck NOW for use on Mars really makes no sense at all.
Don't get me wrong, I hope that little to no consideration was given to mars in the design. But if we happen to get to mars on Elon's most aggressive time tables (2025 iirc) it would make sense to base the vehicles on mars after this rather than designing from scratch. And it would make sense to keep the modifications reasonably minimal if possible.
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