LNG: TESLARATI

This year’s Overland Expo West, held in Fort Tuthill County Park, Flagstaff, AZ, features a pretty unique exhibitor. Amidst the massive modified trucks being showcased at the outdoor adventure event, lies Rivian’s and its R1T pickup truck, outfitted with overlanding equipment.

Overlanding, a term that generally relates to the practice of taking an off-road capable vehicle on a camping trip, has become more popular over the years. Typical overlanding trips usually involve a journey that spans days, with drivers taking their modified vehicles to the outdoors and spending a few nights there. As noted by Off Road Extreme, some overlanders take the concept further, driving their off-road vehicles to remote locations and staying off the grid for weeks at a time.

Vehicles used for overlanding are typically large SUVs and 4x4s due to their capability to tackle challenging terrain. This results in a bit of an irony for overlanding, since vehicles typically used for the practice are not very environmentally friendly. This is where the R1T truly shines. Due to its zero-emissions nature, owners using the all-electric truck for overlanding could enjoy the outdoors with the knowledge that their vehicle is not harming the environment.

Rivian’s announcement of its participation at the 2019 Overland Expo stated that it would be showcasing the R1T on Friday, May 17. Photos of the R1T shared on social media reveal that Rivian has brought a tent attachment for the vehicle as well. This particular attachment has been teased by Rivian before, when it released images of the R1T being used for camping.

The 2019 Overland Expo West (there is a similar event held in Arrington, VA) features over 300 exhibitors showcasing their creations and concepts for the outdoor adventure community. Attendees of the expo could participate in activities such as seminars, moto demos, and ride & drive events, to name a few. The event will even include a film festival.

The transition of the transportation sector to electric propulsion is now underway. Led by first movers such as Tesla and augmented by efforts from veteran carmakers like Porsche, the auto industry is starting to embrace the idea of all-electric cars completely. With this in mind, it was only a matter of time before the off-road, adventure community shifts to electric as well.

Rivian notes that the Overland Expo and the overlanding community, in general, are part of the inspiration behind the creation of the R1T. Perhaps the 2019 Overland Expo will be the place where Rivian’s “electric adventure” movement will take root.

A Tesla-inspired electric car startup in China recently launched its own ride-hailing service, seemingly taking a page once more from the playbook of the Elon Musk-led American carmaker. Xpeng Motors (Xiaopeng), the company behind the initiative, has opted to utilize its own electric vehicle fleet for the service.

The Chinese electric car maker stands as the latest company which jumped into the ride-hailing market in China, an industry that is dominated by giants such as Didi Chuxing. The Tesla-inspired electric car maker has not discussed its fleet size or the specifics of its newly-launched service, though it has noted to local news agencies that its ride-hailing initiatives are aimed at providing “value-added services” for its customers, among others.

Xpeng Motors has been pretty open about the inspiration it takes from the activities of Tesla, previously noting that it sees the American electric car maker as a “benchmark.” In an interview last year, Xpeng founder and serial entrepreneur He Xiaopeng specifically stated that one of the reasons he founded his electric car company “was because Elon Musk made Tesla’s patents available.” He also shares Elon Musk’s optimism on electric propulsion, describing the venture is “exciting.”

In a way, Xpeng’s move into the ride-hailing market is partly a way for the company to future-proof itself. Electric cars are set to become mainstream, and they are also well-poised to transition into the autonomous driving era, which is expected to hit the mainstream transportation industry in the coming years. Tesla is set to be a key player in this emerging market as well, with Elon Musk targeting ride-hailing giants such as Uber and Lyft through the Tesla Network’s Robotaxi service.

The Tesla Network has been in the works for years, with Elon Musk writing about the concept of an autonomous ride-hailing service in his Master Plan Part Deux. Musk envisioned the Telsa Network to allow electric car owners to deploy their vehicles for ride-hailing, essentially allowing the electric cars to earn for their owners. In an investor call, Musk proved optimistic about the service, stating that the Tesla Network could push the company towards a $500 billion valuation.

Musk expects Tesla’s vehicles to be capable of operating on their own by next year, though it remains to be seen if the company could meet the CEO’s aggressive timeline for the service’s rollout. 

After wind shear pushed SpaceX’s Starlink launch debut from May 15th to May 16th, issues with satellite software have forced the company to scrub the second attempt, delaying the launch another ~7 days.

For a mission as spectacularly ambitious as SpaceX’s 60-satellite Starlink launch, delays due to those satellites should come as little to no surprise. Given the sheer numbers involved and the fact that this is the first flight-hardware based on SpaceX’s radically redesigned Starlink satellite bus, this scrub is just a part of the process of developing new spacecraft.

For the time being, this scrub can effectively be considered indefinite. Troubleshooting 60 high-performance satellites – some with possible software or hardware faults – could understandably be a very time-consuming process, particularly if these specific spacecraft are closer to a beta-test than an actual final product. Based on comments made by CEO Elon Musk, that is likely the case. As such, troubleshooting hardware/software faults at the launch site while still mated to Falcon 9 will likely provide excellent experience for all involved.

When dealing with the number of satellites SpaceX will need to realize their Starlink constellation, the company will need to be able to handle the anomalies that will inevitably follow the preparation and launch of 1000 or more satellites annually. Starlink v0.9 is simply the first step – albeit a shockingly large one – in that direction.

Far more important and far less guaranteed is Falcon 9’s wholly unremarkable flow up to launch. Despite it being SpaceX’s third attempt at launching a Falcon 9 booster three times, Falcon 9 B1049 has remained ready to launch throughout the last ~60 hours of operations. Weather is weather and the first batch of dozens of advanced, custom-built communications satellites will inevitably experience bugs, but Falcon 9’s stoic performance is somewhat less guaranteed.

For Starlink to succeed, the launch component of the equation is going to be just as critical – if not more critical – than ensuring that every single satellite is perfect prior to launch, at least within reason. A failure to act as a good steward of the space debris environment could have major regulatory consequences. However, nothing will kill Starlink faster than unreliable, delay-ridden launches, seemingly an unlikely proposition in SpaceX’s current condition.

So long as Falcon 9 Block 5 remains as reliable and consistent as it has thus far proven to be, even fairly serious issues with aspects of the Starlink constellation itself should be more akin to roadblocks than showstoppers. If all goes well with SpaceX’s aforementioned software updates and triple-checks, Starlink v0.9 could be ready to launch around May 22-24. Stay tuned as SpaceX continues to provide updates.

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Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co Ltd stated on Thursday that it would be using cameras and radar in the development of its full self-driving technologies. Seemingly siding with American electric car maker Tesla, Nissan argued that LiDAR, a key component in the autonomous driving systems of competitors such as GM and Ford, is too expensive for its capabilities.

Nissan’s announcement comes roughly a month after Tesla held its Autonomy Day, where Elon Musk dubbed LiDAR a “fool’s errand.” During the event, Musk predicted that companies relying on the light-based sensors would likely abandon the technology in the future. For his part, Tetsuya Iijima, general manager of advanced technology at Nissan, noted in a statement to reporters that LiDAR’s capabilities currently fail to match up to advanced camera and radar solutions.

“At the moment, LiDAR lacks the capabilities to exceed the capabilities of the latest technology in radar and cameras. It would be fantastic if LiDAR technology was at the level that we could use it in our systems, but it’s not. There’s an imbalance between its cost and its capabilities,” Iijima said.

Iijima’s statements about LiDAR are not just empty words from the Japanese carmaker, as Nissan has unveiled its own camera and radar-focused self-driving technology recently. Unlike Tesla’s current Autopilot system, which requires drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel, Nissan’s system allows hands-free driving in single lanes on highways on predefined routes.

To enable this technology, Nissan utilizes cameras, radar, and sonar sensors to compile three-dimensional mapping data, enabling the company’s vehicles to “see” their surroundings accurately. The Japanese carmaker is also developing a “Tri-Cam” system that focuses on three points to the front and sides of a vehicle, allowing cars to capture a wide area of view.

Nissan plans to roll out its self-driving technology even to its lineup of affordable vehicles in the future. By doing so, the carmaker expects to see a boost in sales, enabling it to recover from a profit slump. Nissan’s earnings have been rough as of late, with the company noting during a recent report that it had hit “rock bottom” amidst the aftermath of a financial scandal related to its former chairman, Carlos Ghosn.

Tesla’s full self-driving strategy, which uses cameras and artificial intelligence, was explained by Sr. Director of AI Andrej Karpathy during the electric car maker’s Autonomy Day event last month. Karpathy likened Tesla’s full self-driving approach to the way humans operate a vehicle, even joking that the event’s attendees only used their biological cameras (eyes) and neural networks (brain) to drive to the event’s venue. “You all used your own neural network in your brains to get here. You didn’t shoot lasers from your eyes to drive,” Karpathy lightly said.

NASA has announced a series of awards as part of its 2024 Moon return ambitions, providing up to $45.5M for 11 companies to study lunar landers, spacecraft, and in-space refueling technologies.

Among those selected for studies are SpaceX, Blue Origin, Masten Space, and the Sierra Nevada Corporation, alongside usual suspects like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The chances of NASA actually achieving a crewed return to the surface of the Moon by 2024 are admittedly minuscule. However, with the space agency’s relatively quick three-month turnaround from accepting proposals to awarding studies, those chances of success will at least be able to continue skirting the realm of impossibility for now. In fact, SpaceX believes its Moon lander could be ready for a lunar debut as early as 2023.

Do the OldSpace Limbo!

Almost exactly 90 days (three months) since NASA released its lunar lander request for proposal (RFP), the 11 US companies selected for awards can now begin mature their designs, concepts of operations, and even build prototypes in a select few cases. At least based on the volume of awards and prototypes funded, the bulk of the $45.5M available for these studies unsurprisingly appears to have gone to Boeing and Lockheed. The duo of military-industrial complex heavyweights have maintained a decades-old stranglehold over NASA’s human spaceflight procurement.

In the last 13 years, the companies – combined – have carefully extracted no less than $35B from NASA, all of which has thus far produced a single launch of a half-finished prototype spacecraft (Orion) on a contextually irrelevant rocket (Delta IV Heavy) in 2014. The SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft remain almost perpetually delayed and are unlikely to complete their uncrewed launch debut until 2021, if not later.

SpaceX enters the lunar lander fray

“SpaceX was founded with the goal of helping humanity become a spacefaring civilization. We are excited to extend our long-standing partnership with NASA to help return humans to the Moon, and ultimately to venture beyond.”

– SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell

SpaceX was one of the 11 companies to receive NASA funding for a lunar lander-related design study. By all appearances, the company has been analyzing this potential use-case for some time. What they offer is significantly more complex than what NASA’s press release described as “one descent element study”. First and foremost, however, it must be stressed that these NASA funded studies – particularly those relegated to design, with no prototype builds – are really just concepts on paper. The NASA funding will help motivate companies to at least analyze and flesh out their actual capabilities relative to the task and time frame at hand, but there is no guarantee that more than one or two of the 11 studies will translate into serious hardware contracts.

Regardless of the many qualifications, SpaceX’s proposed descent module (i.e. Moon lander) is undeniably impressive. If SpaceX were to win a development contract, the lander would be based on flight-proven Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon subsystems wherever possible, translating into a vehicle that would have significant flight heritage even before its first launch. That first Moon landing attempt could come as early as 2023 and would utilize the performance of SpaceX’s own Falcon Heavy, currently the most powerful rocket in operation.

No renders have been released at this stage but it’s safe to assume that a SpaceX Moon lander would be somewhat comparable to Blue Origin’s just-announced Blue Moon lander, capable of delivering ~6.5t (14,300 lb) to the lunar surface. Rather than hydrogen and oxygen, SpaceX would instead use either Crew Dragon’s NTO/MMH propulsion or base the lander on Falcon 9’s extremely mature liquid kerosene/oxygen upper stage and Merlin Vacuum (MVac) engine.

Impressively, the SpaceX lander would aim for nearly double Blue Moon’s 6.5t payload capability, delivering as much as 12t (26,500 lb) to the surface of the Moon. That payload could either enable an unprecedentedly large crew capsule/ascent vehicle or permit the delivery of truly massive robotic or cargo payloads. Additionally, SpaceX believes that a descent stage with the aforementioned capabilities could potentially double as an excellent orbital transfer stage, refueling tug, and more. The lander would also serve as a full-up testbed for all the advanced technologies SpaceX needs to enable its goals of sustainable, reliable, and affordable solar system colonization.

Time will tell if NASA is actually serious about upsetting the status quo and getting to the Moon quickly and affordably, or if they will instead fall back on well-worn habits shown to minimize results and maximize cost. The White House recently proposed an additional $1.6B be added to NASA’s FY2020 budget, inexplicably choosing to take those funds from the federal Pell Grant system, which helps more than five million underprivileged Americans afford higher education. Regardless of the sheer political ineptitude involved in the proposed funding increase, even $1.6B annually (the WH proposal is for one year only) would be a pittance in the face of the spectacular inefficiencies of usual contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The telltale sign of which direction NASA’s lunar ambitions are headed will come when the agency begins to award actual development and hardware production contracts to one or several of the proposals to be studied. Stay tuned!

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Upper-level wind shear has unfortunately scrubbed SpaceX’s first dedicated Starlink launch attempt, pushing Falcon 9 B1049’s third liftoff to no earlier than 10:30 pm EDT (02:30 UTC), May 16th.

A few hours prior to the launch attempt, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hosted a conference call with members of the press and answered a number of questions about Starlink, providing the best look yet into the company’s newest endeavor. Topics included the advanced technologies on each Starlink satellite, their extremely unorthodox deployment method, SpaceX’s ultimate goals for the constellation, and even a few brief comments on funding.

Funding, secured

Perhaps the single most important thing Musk noted in the hour-long media briefing was his belief that SpaceX already has “sufficient capital to build an operational constellation.” It’s possible that that statement is heavily qualified, as Musk did not delve into greater detail, but it is still an incredible claim that could mean Starlink is far ahead of competing constellations and far more capital-efficient than OneWeb.

As previously discussed on Teslarati, in the last four years, OneWeb has raised $3.4B of funding, while SpaceX – a company primarily focused on building and launching rockets – has raised $2B, half of which is known to be dedicated to Starlink. OneWeb’s constellation (either 650 or 2650 satellites) cost estimate has grown quite a bit recently and stands at ~$5B. Assuming all $2B of the funding SpaceX has raised is dedicated to Starlink, that would translate to a per-satellite cost – including all infrastructure and launch – of $450,000 for the first phase (~4400 satellites).

Musk’s contextual definition of an “operational constellation” is probably more in line with the twelve 60-satellite launches he described as necessary to provide “significant [broadband] coverage”. It could also refer to the entire tranche of ~1600 Starlink satellites planned for the lower 550 km (340 mi) orbit this first batch of 60 is headed for, a number that Musk stated would offer “decent global coverage”. Either way, Starlink is almost certainly far more capital-efficient than OneWeb, LeoSat, Telesat, or any other satellite constellation with serious intentions.

The most obvious explanation for this – regardless of the satellites themselves – is simple: SpaceX owns its own closed-loop launch capability, including pads, integration facilities, an established cross-country transport network, and the rockets (Falcon) themselves. For any of the proposed satellite constellations to succeed, the manufacturers will almost invariably need to find build satellites so affordably that the cost of launch outweighs the cost of its payload. This ultimately means that launches alone could account for something like 50% of the cost of an entire satellite constellation.

Assuming Block 5 boosters can be reused at least 5-10 times each, the only real cost of an internal SpaceX launch is the hours worked, recovery fleet operations, and the expended upper stage and fairing – likely less than $30M altogether. As such, SpaceX may already be achieving its satellite cost targets on its first launch.

Deploying satellites “like spreading a deck of cards”

Meanwhile, Musk also offered some detail on the deeply unorthodox method SpaceX has chosen for spacecraft deployment once in orbit. Apparently, Starlink satellites will be deployed from Falcon 9’s upper stage by rotating the stage (presumably along its vertical axis) and simply letting go of the spacecraft. Musk used the analogy of spreading a deck of cards on a table, seemingly suggesting that they will either be released simultaneously (perhaps by stack) or with a stagger measured in milliseconds. This could create a fairly spectacular visual, forming an evenly-spaced spiral of satellites spreading out from the Falcon upper stage.

Above all else, Musk mainly seemed to be excited about Starlink, whether discussing the constellation’s long-term goals or the technology utilized on each individual satellite. Some miscellaneous facts and tidbits taken from the Q&A can be found below:

• Aside from Ka-band antennas and inter-satellite laser links, these 60 Starlink spacecraft are very close to the final spacecraft design.
• “It’s one of the hardest engineering projects that I’ve ever seen done.” – Elon Musk
• Starlink v0.9 is SpaceX’s heaviest payload ever by a huge margin, weighing in around 18,500 kg (40,800 lb). Crew Dragon is most likely in second-place, with a launch mass estimated to be around 13,500 kg.
• Combined, the solar arrays on the 60 Starlink spacecraft will produce up to 50% more power than the International Space Station’s football field-sized panels. This translates to ~180 kW, with each spacecraft thus producing around 3 kW total with an unusual single-panel array.
  • Two solar array deployment mechanisms will be tested on this mission.
• “We see this as a way to generate revenue to develop more advanced rockets and spaceships. Starlink is a key component for establishing a presence on the moon and Mars.” – Elon Musk
• SpaceX sided with krypton-fueled Hall effect thrusters due to krypton costing 5-10x less than more traditional xenon propellant. SpaceX’s internally-designed and built thrusters will have an ISP of ~1500s.
• “[SpaceX has built] the most advanced phased array antenna[s] that I am aware of.” – Elon Musk
• These first 60 satellites alone will have a combined bandwidth of 1 terabit per second (125 GB/s), averaging around 17 Gbps per satellite.

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