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.
"Tesla Cybertruck (pressurized edition) will be official truck of Mars"
They have designed it to drive on Mars.
Premature Optimization if I have ever heard of it.
Having to remove a space suite so you can adjust the atmospheric controls sounds stupid.
Anyways, SpaceX space suits are compatible with touchscreens... And that seems unlikely to change given how easy it is to make them that way.
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.
The first car on the moon was unpressurized because the program was a once-cancelled afterthought designed to fit into a spare cargo bay and unfold, with tight mass constraints. MOLAB was impractical because of the upmass required, not because pressurization wouldn't have been useful.
Fair point. I don't see how that would work on this specific vehicle, but it is certainly works in general.
>The first car on the moon was unpressurized because the program was a once-cancelled afterthought designed to fit into a spare cargo bay and unfold, with tight mass constraints. MOLAB was impractical because of the upmass required, not because pressurization wouldn't have been useful.
A lot of those requirements still stand regarding mass. It isn't a question of whether a pressurized vehicle would be useful on Mars, it is a question of whether its usefulness is enough to justify its weight and this vehicle appears to have a lot of extra weight that would need justification.
It doesn't have to happen on the first trip. They could send the truck to Mars on one of the current rockets and just have it sit there until they're ready to use it. It's an electric vehicle. There's plenty of solar exposure on Mars, they can charge it over the course of weeks if they needed to, even though they don't, and the durability would guarantee that it could serve up there for years. It could literally just sit there and do nothing for the 3-5 years it takes them to build out a basic hab and a dock for it.
All your points about the benefits of an electric vehicle apply just as well to something lighter that is specifically and only designed for travel to and on Mars.
In general, Musk treats engineering as a scarce resource. If he can use a Tesla vehicle instead of designing a special rover, he will, even if it weighs a little more. Starship can handle more than 100 tons of payload and its successor will do four times that.
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).
> true all-terrain body-on-frame construction
Why would you prefer this? It's just a form of construction that requires more materials, and results in a weak body that can be damaged. Furthermore, we get all the materials for the unibody design (lots of stainless steel) free from starships that won't return, and the material is easy to work with.
Mar's terrain is pretty simple. Rocks, and sand. We almost certainly will choose not to land on sand, so we only really need to deal with rocks. Cybertruck, really any earth vehicle with a reasonable clearance, should be able to deal with that well enough, maybe with some custom tires.
Thermal management, and problems relating to pressurization, are the only things that jump out as me as real difficulties. Neither sounds like it needs fundamental reworks though.
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.
I definately chose the wrong parents.
On Earth, it's ugly.
I've done it of course.
Most people would put 'buying access to a track' into the 'things I will never do'-box.
Track nights can be as low as $125 and you will hit triple digits.
But yea, $125 is equally as out of reach as being dropped on Mars.