As reported by Engadget: At the unveiling of Tesla's Cybertruck, Elon Musk showed off a video of the low-polygon-count pickup defeating an F-150 in a tug of war. Since then, many have complained it wasn't a good comparison, since the presumable AWD Cybertruck appeared to face off against a RWD Ford with nothing in the bed to help its tires get grip, and took off first.
As reported by Space.com: Elon Musk has a Starship, and one day he expects it will help SpaceX reach other worlds.
Standing beneath a towering Starship Mk1, a prototype for SpaceX's massive reusable launch system, Musk laid out his plan for interplanetary travel at the company's South Texas test site here on Saturday (Sept. 28) — the 11th anniversary of the first successful orbital launch of SpaceX's first rocket, the Falcon 1.
The new version of Starship (and its Super Heavy booster) will be able to carry up to 100people to the moon, Mars or other destinations in space or around Earth, he said. It will stand 387feet (118meters) tall and be completely reusable, with quick turnarounds.
This is the rocket that will launch the billionaire Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa and a handful of artists on a trip around the moon in the 2020s. SpaceX unveiled that planned space tourist trip last year (but did not disclose how much Maezawa paid).
"This is, I think, the most inspiring thing I have ever seen," Musk told a crowd of about 200 SpaceX employees, guests and reporters at the company's site near Boca Chica Village, just outside of Brownsville. "Wow, what an incredible job by such a great team to build this incredible vehicle. I'm so proud to work with such a great team."
Musk later thanked Maezawa for his support. The billionaire has contributed an unspecified amount to SpaceX to aid Starship's development.
Musk has long said that the main goal of SpaceX, since its founding in 2002, has been to help make humanity a multiplanet species. The company has developed reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, as well as reusable Dragon cargo capsules and a new Crew Dragon ship for astronauts. It has launchpads in Florida, California and now Boca Chica, where the company broke ground on its test site in 2014.
But Mars, Musk has said, has remained the true objective.
"This is the fastest path to a self-sustaining city on Mars," he said Saturday night, referring to the Starship-Super Heavy architecture.
A Starship evolution
SpaceX's Starship concept has undergone a kind of rocket evolution in the three years since Musk first unveiled it to the world in September 2016 at the International Astronautical Union meeting in Mexico.
At that meeting, Musk unveiled what he called the the Interplanetary Transport System, or ITS, for Mars colonization. The ITS called for a fully reusable spacecraft (with two fins) and booster that would stand 400 feet (122 m) high when assembled. Its first stage would have 42 next-generation Raptor engines, and the booster would be 40 feet (12 m) wide. The spacecraft would have nine Raptors. (SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets have nine Merlin engines on their first stage. Falcon Heavy first stages have 27 Merlins.)
Musk updated the design in 2017, calling it the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR for short. That plan called for a launch system that would stand 348 feet (106 meters) tall and 30 feet (9 m) wide. Its booster would have 31 Raptor engines, while the spacecraft atop it would have six.
Then, in 2018, Musk unveiled yet another design (and the Starship name): a sleek, stainless-steel spacecraft with three tail fins that would stand taller than its 2017 precursor, with a height of 387 feet (118 m). The spacecraft would still be powered by six Raptor engines, with up to 37 Raptors powering the booster (now called Super Heavy).
The switch to 301 stainless steel from a lightweight, but expensive, carbon fiber composite material, was a turning point, Musk said. The steel gets stronger the colder it gets, making it perfect for flights in the cold depths of space. It also has a higher melting point, making it more resilient during the fiery reentry through Earth's atmosphere.
It's also way cheaper, about 2% the cost of carbon fiber, he added.
"Steel was the best design decision on this whole thing," Musk said.
This latest design has held to the present day; SpaceX is still shooting for a 387-foot-tall Starship-Super Heavy stack, with six Raptors on the spacecraft. The number of engines on Super Heavy could vary from flight to flight; Musk said the rocket has space for up to 37 Raptors, and each mission will probably require at least 24.
"Starship will allow us to inhabit other worlds," Musk wrote on Twitter Friday (Sept. 27). "To make life as we know it interplanetary."
With the design nailed down, SpaceX plans to move fast.
"This is going to sound totally nuts but I think we want to try to reach orbit in less than six months," Musk said. "Provided the rate of design improvement and manufacturing improvement continues to be exponential, I think that is accurate to within a few months."
.And people could start flying aboard the vehicle in the next year or so if the test program continues to go well, he added. That appears to be an extremely accelerated program, given that SpaceX has not yet launched astronauts on its Crew Dragon spacecraft for NASA.
As reported by Jalopnik: Yeah, sure, Bugatti breaking the 300+ mph mark with the Chiron is a pretty big deal, but have you ever seen something go 6,599 miles per hour before? Can you even see that? This video features the U.S. Air Force testing a hypersonic sled at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. While you might only see a bright flash of light, what you’re actually seeing is a sled traveling at Mach 8.6. You’re going to want to turn the sound on for this one.
The threshold of hypersonic speed is Mach 5—something that this sled extremely exceeds. The U.S. Air Force is testing a lot of things to see if they can withstand hypersonic speeds given that this is a growing focus of the military. If something is going to be moving at thousands of miles per hour, everything involved in it needs to be able to withstand high acceleration forces and heat stressors. That includes everything from wiring to exterior coatings, which is why the military uses the Holloman High Speed Test Track on the base. The original track was completed in 1949 and grew to be ten miles in length, used by government agencies and contractors to test weapons and other things, since it’s cheaper to do that on the ground than it is to do it in the air. This particular test, as the base noted on Instagram, saw the sled going over a mile per second.
As reported by TechCrunch: CEO Elon Musk promised a more powerful powertrain option in future Model S and Model X vehicles, as well as the next-generation Roadster sports car, which will push acceleration and speed beyond the current high bar known as Ludicrous mode. Musk tweeted Wednesday evening “the only thing beyond Ludicrous is Plaid,” a teaser to a higher-performing vehicle and a nod to the movie “Spaceballs.”
These new higher-performing versions of the Model S, Model X and Roadster will contain what Musk describes as a Plaid powertrain and is still about a year away from production. This new powertrain will have three motors, one more than the dual-motor system found in today’s Model S and X.
Yes. To be clear, Plaid powertrain is about a year away from production & applies to S,X & Roadster, but not 3 or Y. Will cost more than our current offerings, but less than competitors.
This Plaid powertrain has already seen some action. Tesla revealed Wednesday that a Model S equipped with a Plaid powertrain and chassis prototype had lapped Laguna Seca racetrack in 1:36:555, a second faster than the record for a four-door sedan.
The “Plaid” powertrain will not be offered in the lower-cost Model 3 or Model Y, which isn’t expected to go into production until late 2020. Musk also promised that this Plaid powertrain will cost more than “current offerings, but will be less than competitors,” without explaining what that means. Close followers of the automaker might recall hints of a three-motor powertrain in the past. When Tesla unveiled a new Roadster prototype in November 2017, Musk said it would have three motors and be able to travel a whopping 0 to 60 miles per hour in 1.9 seconds with a top speed of 250 mph or even more. The Roadster isn’t expected to go into production until 2020.
What is new are Tesla’s plans to make this more powerful three-motor powertrain available in the Model S and Model X. And it stands to be an important option, if it does in fact materialize. The Model S has been around since 2012; since the introduction the cheaper Model 3, sales have dipped.
And yet, Musk has said the X and S won’t be getting a major refresh. If Tesla hopes to maintain demand for either of its higher-margin luxury vehicles, new trims like this Plaid powertrain will be essential.
Tesla first announced Ludicrous mode in its Model S vehicles way back in July 2015. As shareholders and customers awaited the Model X to arrive, Musk unveiled several options for the company’s Model S sedan, including a lower-priced version, longer battery range and “Ludicrous mode” for even faster acceleration.
Ludicrous mode, which improved acceleration by 10% to let drivers go from 0 to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds, came about as a result of an improved battery fuse. This new fuse, Musk explained in a blog post at the time, has its own electronics and a tiny lithium-ion battery that monitors current and protects against excessive current.
Tesla also upgraded the main pack contactor with a high-temperature space-grade superalloy instead of steel. This enabled the battery pack to remain “springy” under the heat of heavy current. In the end, the max pack output increased from 1300 to 1500 Amps.
Ludicrous was a $10,000 add on for new buyers. Tesla did reduce the price for existing Model S P85 owners for the first six months following the announcement and sold them the pack electronics upgrade needed for Ludicrous mode for $5,000.
Musk joked in this 2015 blog post that there is “one speed faster than ludicrous, but that is reserved for the next generation Roadster in 4 years: maximum plaid.”
