Gonna be real interesting to see how this progresses
For Australia it has spurred a lot more public discussion in the media, which will hopefully get things moving in the right direction despite some of the Jurassic fossils lingering in our goverments. They keep complaining renewables will drive up electricity costs, but the reality is that our gas exports are doing that instead. We export around 2/3 of our supply and so it has driven up energy costs due to artificial scarcity.
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Tesla solar power arrives in Puerto Rico - BBC News
The solar panel and battery storage will provide power to a childrenâs hospital
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The Tesla Semi announcement. For some reason their original video got DMCAâd a few minutes after going up 
It was hilarious to watch the Nikola Motors twitter explode afterwards. Someone quickly deleted the original outburst and put up a more sanitised version 
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Unless somebody stages the most outrageous carjacking of all time.
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To be fair, that sounds a bit like a challengeâŚ
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I could see the roadster being recovered and put in a museum in a few to many hundreds of years if space travel goes places⌠It probably wont be out there too long.
maybe theyâll test the HFS âhuge falcon spaceshipâ by recovering the tesla
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I would pay to see this movie
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Was there a battery pack in it? If there is I wonder how long it would last until it fails and catches fire or something
This is the ultimate vehicle stress test.
The batteries powering the cameras and communication equipment had about 12 hours of power in them at launch. They are long dead.
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I think it would of been good if they had added a solar panels (orientated sun side), with some way to correct so the panels face the sun always, and enough HD camera and transmitting gear to transmit periodically so the world could check in on the state of the car. But I guess thatâs a whole extra bunch of weight and preparations and testing needed and a a risk of failure not worth taken. Still, would be cool to be able to check in once a week or month on the condition.
Yes it does seem a shame that there is no more value to be gained from the payload.
But then again, it was a test and as the probability of explosive RUD on the pad was significant, it wouldnât have made sense to invest much in the payload.
I keep thinking in terms of in-atmosphere conditions because itâs a car I never considered that it may not catch fire due to the lack of any oxygen or gases. However, with direct exposure to the sun in a vacuum wouldnât it heat up to hundreds of degrees C despite the icy temps in its shaded spots? or would the temperature difference just cancel it out?
If there is a lithium battery in the car what would happen to it? Aside from being bombarded by the sunâs radiation. Is it too inert to combust?
Yes, the parts in direct sunlight will heat up to very hot temperatures, and the shaded parts will be cold. The same thing happens to the outside of the ISS, but that has lots of insulation.
Iâm not sure what the exact results would be as itâs also tumbling slightly, so the areas heated and cooled will change. Depends on the thermal properties of the car I guess, which is not something Iâve ever discussed before in this context!
In the case of the batteries, the initial fire/explosion is not oxygen dependant, so it can happen in space.
The usual follow-up of melting flesh as someoneâs pocket turns into a makeshift firework, on the other hand, should not last long if at all.
But how many of us even considered sticking a camera on it when we saw that they were launching a Roadster? I sure didnât. My only thought was to gain access to it after a few years in space as a materials exposure experiment - which is impractical.
It wonât do it the way it would in a nitrogen/oxygen environment, but itâ entirely possible that the materials there could ablate, vaporize,melt or otherwise gain energy enough to produce all sorts of funky results. I mention this because oxygen could be freed from the materials themselves and trigger something akin to fire, at a very small scale. Itâs why space agencies run long duration exposure experiments with all sorts of different materials. NASA has the MISSE series.
Hereâs the materials panel from the MISSE 2 mission, which exposed a bunch of polymers. That changes have taken place is obvious.
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