Elon Musk Speaks About Tesla and SpaceX at Vanity Fair’s Summit [video]

Re:Elon Musk Speaks About Tesla and SpaceX at Vanity Fair’s ... by omegant on Thursday October 23, 2014 @06:27PM (#8501089)

I'm curious about his electric vertical take off and landing supersonic airplane idea. He has mentioned it in several interviews so far.

I wonder how he plans to position the electric motors and the fans. Vertical take off needs a huge amount of power compared to normal runway take off, that means bigger batteries...

He surely has based the concept in first principles, but I must be missing something about this one.

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Re:Elon Musk Speaks About Tesla and SpaceX at Vanity Fair’s ... by grecy on Thursday October 23, 2014 @07:22PM (#8501273)

Just speculating.. do you have to take the launch batteries with you?

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Re:Elon Musk Speaks About Tesla and SpaceX at Vanity Fair’s ... by remarkEon on Friday October 24, 2014 @12:24AM (#8502141)

That's what I was thinking. In my head I was seeing something still connected and that once it's actually airborne the craft jettisons the power cables.

Or maybe there's a way to fundamentally re-think how we're designing airports.

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Re:Elon Musk Speaks About Tesla and SpaceX at Vanity Fair’s ... by omegant on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @01:10PM (#8522027)

I didn't think it that way, maybe a vertical launching tower to give the initial take of acceleration with linear induction ala Hyperloop. It's a good idea.

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