Eclipse Now

The fun, and not-so-fun, of Elon’s ‘hover-car’.

Ok, I did not see this coming! It’s a lot of fun – for billionaires to waste their money on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN6strasoHA

The fan sucks it to the concrete ramp with the force of 2G. It’s going to hug corners like no other race car in history. Could that be modified and made more economic for cop-cars? But as soon as I had that thought, I immediately countered with “What a waste of money!”

We should probably give up even thinking about car chases now that Ai surveillance, drones, and hacking of future EV’s will probably be universal. Remember the car chase in “Minority Report”? Yeah, that’s right. There isn’t one. The pods just pulled you over when they scanned your eyeballs and realised the cops were after you.

I know the Tesla Roadster LOOKS like the pods from Minority Report as it hangs there on the side of the concrete ramp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrxyr1CjiSM

But in Minority Report the pods seem glued to the wall by their tyres, rather than wasting energy trying to SUCK to the wall! (I imagine the tyres in Minority Report to be something like the “Smart Dimms” from Snow Crash? I don’t remember any wall driving, but when you are driving pizza in a cyberpunk novel, and you have tricked out your car with the latest nano-tech tyres to allow cool cornering because you’re delivering pizza for the mob – then there’s a certain set of expectations about what happens when you FAIL to deliver the pizza in the guaranteed 30 minutes! 😉

Just imagine how much energy this Roaster wall-hug trick costs? Let alone the Jack-Flip jump itself!
How much of your battery do you burn driving up the side of a building like this?

No, this is not practical. I doubt it will be road legal anywhere in the world, and I doubt the cops will get it. MAYBE James Bond. But who is the super-villain in this hypothetical world?

Is it not Elon himself?

I love Elon’s projects, but not the man.

He was my hero back in the day. I was awkward about the cheesy moniker “Musketeer”, but I was one. It was inevitable. As a greenie activist, I thought EV’s were a necessarily evil to give us time to wean off oil. I would prefer we built better, more walk-able cities. The best EV is a metro! But we need time to have that conversation about town planning.

THEN I’m also a Geek, fascinated by space and especially building a Colony on Mars. Have been for years. I’ve read KSR and watched The Expanse, and have a bookshelf of this stuff. Musk used to be my hero, twice over!

Then his politics started to come out. Of all the people on earth, he has the most likely potential – if he decides to – to become a James Bond super-villain. Seriously, one man has the power to shut down the internet as many countries around the world have their internet access supplemented – if not totally dependent – on SpaceX Starlink? How is this not a matter for the UN to decide?

One wonders what apocalypse bunkers these tech bros have built?

We’re building a bunch of environmental and social debts. I don’t which debt will come due first. Climate change? Ai apocalypse? Ecocide? Ai-“war-by-accident”? Social cohesion breaking down due to Social Media spreading lies 6 times faster than truth? EG: Will it be a new pandemic taking over, now that so many of us have fallen for online amtivax stupidity?

I just hope Elon can restrain his crazy enough to let the good of his companies be his lasting legacy. If building a Jack-Flip EV helps him get his kicks, and the super-rich want to waste money on that, OK. It’s caught my attention this morning.

But where should my attention have been? Trump’s latest misinformation? Something nasty brewing in Africa that’s going to hurt hundreds of thousands or millions? The latest terrifying Ai news? Or doing some chore around the house for my family?

Etc, etc, etc…