by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Two weeks ago yesterday I took a solitary stroll down a busy street in the Waikiki district of Honolulu. One of the first places I encountered, and stepped into, was the famous International Marketplace. When I had been in Honolulu forty-some years earlier the International Marketplace was similar to a large flea market with tourist paraphernalia like tee-shirts, wood carvings, and all sorts of other locally-produced doodads and gee-haws stacked and shelved for quick consumption by visitors to the islands.
Honolulu's International Marketplace has changed considerably over the past four decades. Now it is a multi-story complex that houses several high-end retailers (like Saks Fifth Avenue), nice restaurants, and one car dealership: Tesla. The Tesla dealership, which occupied spaces on two floors, contained a total of four shiny new Tesla sedans of different colors - one of which was cherry red. Being a tourist, and a hillbilly, I carefully took pictures of each and every one!
A few days later I found myself on the same street and stopped in to check on my Teslas. Only one of the four was gone - the red one. Devastated, I walked on.
Later today SpaceX, a private space venture owned by Elon Musk, the entrepreneur who also owns the Tesla company, will shoot its "Falcon Heavy" rocket into space along with a most unique payload. The rocket will be carrying Musk's personal 2010 midnight cherry red Tesla Roadster Sport into deep space where no car has gone before.
Elon Musk's original plan had been to send the little roadster into an orbit around Mars, but that goal was upended by an international treaty designed to protect planets from human contamination, so instead the vehicle will be sent to a distance from the sun that is roughly equal to the Mars orbit, That plan, which will set the car on its own elliptic orbit of the sun, passed muster with the treaty.
And Musk has added one more fun quirk to this highly distinctive and personal project. A copy of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will be placed in the glove box along with a towel and a sign reading "Don't Panic."
Elon Musk shared his project on Instagram in December with the following post and a photo of his roadster.:
Sometime in the distant future a space traveler will discover the little red roadster drifting through the endless dark, undoubtedly the work of a God, and a new mythos will be born.
Citizen Journalist
Two weeks ago yesterday I took a solitary stroll down a busy street in the Waikiki district of Honolulu. One of the first places I encountered, and stepped into, was the famous International Marketplace. When I had been in Honolulu forty-some years earlier the International Marketplace was similar to a large flea market with tourist paraphernalia like tee-shirts, wood carvings, and all sorts of other locally-produced doodads and gee-haws stacked and shelved for quick consumption by visitors to the islands.
Honolulu's International Marketplace has changed considerably over the past four decades. Now it is a multi-story complex that houses several high-end retailers (like Saks Fifth Avenue), nice restaurants, and one car dealership: Tesla. The Tesla dealership, which occupied spaces on two floors, contained a total of four shiny new Tesla sedans of different colors - one of which was cherry red. Being a tourist, and a hillbilly, I carefully took pictures of each and every one!
A few days later I found myself on the same street and stopped in to check on my Teslas. Only one of the four was gone - the red one. Devastated, I walked on.
Later today SpaceX, a private space venture owned by Elon Musk, the entrepreneur who also owns the Tesla company, will shoot its "Falcon Heavy" rocket into space along with a most unique payload. The rocket will be carrying Musk's personal 2010 midnight cherry red Tesla Roadster Sport into deep space where no car has gone before.
Elon Musk's original plan had been to send the little roadster into an orbit around Mars, but that goal was upended by an international treaty designed to protect planets from human contamination, so instead the vehicle will be sent to a distance from the sun that is roughly equal to the Mars orbit, That plan, which will set the car on its own elliptic orbit of the sun, passed muster with the treaty.
And Musk has added one more fun quirk to this highly distinctive and personal project. A copy of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will be placed in the glove box along with a towel and a sign reading "Don't Panic."
Elon Musk shared his project on Instagram in December with the following post and a photo of his roadster.:
“A Red Car for the Red Planet"
“Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring. Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel. The payload will be an original Tesla Roadster, playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit.”
Sometime in the distant future a space traveler will discover the little red roadster drifting through the endless dark, undoubtedly the work of a God, and a new mythos will be born.
1 comment:
On a recent adventure into Kansas City's east side, near my old tromping grounds, I noticed a Tesla dealership in an industrial area along Manchester Boulevard just a stone's throw away from the old Body by Fisher General Motors plant in the Leeds area of the city. Kansas City, Mo. has another Tesla dealership. That one on the world famous Country Club Plaza. While having one dealership in the low rent district may be egalitarian, I suspect each dealership charges the same price. There is also a charging station near the east side location.
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