Comment by pastel8739
2 days ago
to be fair we don’t actually know yet that this is a high performance car. We only saw it drive a few mph without rocket assistance
2 days ago
to be fair we don’t actually know yet that this is a high performance car. We only saw it drive a few mph without rocket assistance
I would like to know two things:
1. Why don't they show a driver entering or exiting? 2. How much do that particular "car" weigh?
They imply a heavy weight with the suction downforce numbers but I think those numbers are not real. I’m reminded of neural link where the pig food detector was unimpressive, then shortly later a monkey demo was very impressive, they have since had human trials and humans don’t appear to get anywhere close to that same level.
They said there was no real driver in it for safety reasons
Well, that's a bit of a downer then isn't it? Not safe enough for them but safe enough for you to put a downpayment on...
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Good point. It can't have much battery. Also wonder if the propellant/s are cryogenic. Monopropellant? You could tell from analyzing the plume.
I've seen a clip that shows under the skin.
It's compressed air RCS. The compressor, regulators and a ton of hardware take up the entire space from the seats back to literally the very last inch of the car. Hard pipes run along the door frame for the forward RCS, meaning only one person (driver) can sit in it and enter from the drivers side. Huge carbon RCS tanks fill every other space.
No idea how long it would take to recharge the tanks after venting them.
There's no room for 'car' stuff in it.
Interestingly there is a big... sleeve of wizard... that extends down under the car to assist the ground effect fan. Packaging that and the RCS stuff into it is a real engineering feat.
But it didn't look to have crash structures, or any other production ready hardware.
Link? Sounds interesting.
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SpaceX lost a Falcon 9 to one of these things rupturing. A car accident with these onboard sounds… unfun.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/03/13/nasa-releases-summary-...
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I think everyone is getting too caught up in the Thrust and Rocket variants. There aren’t going to be very many of those. But the base model will just be a regular Tesla.
> But the base model will just be a regular Tesla.
A regular Tesla that sucks, you mean?
Even the base model has “active aerodynamics and a multi-mode suction system that maximizes downforce for next-level performance on and off the track.”
Sounds like it was just compressed air (rechargeable on the fly). Impressive if true.
I am pretty skeptical that that’s actually what was used in the demo. It would be so much simpler to just use whatever they use for the rockets for the demo, which certainly isn’t rechargeable
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