Elon Musk Talks Seattle Satellites For Mars, Teases Model X Autonomy Features

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk held a press conference today at SpaceX HQ (via Bloomberg) to discuss a number of his companys upcoming initiatives, including a new engineering office in Seattle, as well as next-generation autonomous driving features for Tesla, and the progress of SpaceXs reusable rocket program, in light of a near-successful recapture of the stage 1 rocket during this weeks Dragon launch.

Musk mostly retread old territory, talking about the new satellite engineering facility in Seattle (which is actually dedicated to satellite development, in addition to actually being a satellite office, yuk yuk) and how it will pave the way for Musks ultimate goal of colonizing Mars within his lifetime.The ambitious CEO has discussed Mars colonization in the past, first in October as a viable option for preserving the future of humanity. Hes also promised more recently to reveal more details of his colonization plan this year, of which SpaceXs satellite plans act as one small part.

Other topics up for discussion at the event included Teslas sales goals: The electric car-maker wants to ship 100,000 vehicles per year, which is a steep incline from its 33,000 shipping total for all of 2014. That was limited by its ability to produce enough vehicles to meet demand, however, and Musk said that plans to ship the SUV format Model X in the third quarter of this year, as previously announced.

The Model X wont just be news because it will offer the convenience factors of a larger vehicle, but because it will be different in other regards from whats come before. Musk said that it will feature a whole bunch of things [] that have not been revealed, according to Bloomberg, and that it will have autonomous driving features that are a step beyond what weve already seen from the company in that area. Musk has previously stated that Tesla will lead the market in autonomous driving, offering something akin to autopilot for its cars before anyone else does so in consumer models.

The SpaceX CEO also discussed the recent landing attempt for the first stage rocket that helped propel Dragon to its fifth resupply mission for the International Space Station. The rocket nearly succeeded in touching down for a landing aboard a SpaceX autonomous seafaring spaceportbarge, but ran out of hydraulic fluid and landed hard instead, damaging the platform. Musk says that in around three weeks time, theyll have a decent chance to pull it off without incident.

I honestly just paused after re-reading that last paragraph and thought I cant believe Im living in a time where Im able to write that sentence, and not in a fictional context. That is all.

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Elon Musk Talks Seattle Satellites For Mars, Teases Model X Autonomy Features