Billionaire vows to turn 007's Lotus Esprit into actual submarine car The anonymous buyer of the Lotus Esprit submarine car from the James Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me has turned out to be none other than billionaire inventor Elon Musk. The white car made famous in Roger Moore's Bond film was sold at auction in the UK last month for £550,000. As is typical of most auctions, the identity of …
Given that he appears to have made a success out of both electric sportscars and cheap rockets, I'd be very cautious about using the word wacky about any of this guy's projects. I'm sure he's bound to screw something up, as if you keep trying hard things that's pretty much inevitable.
But he appears to have taken two established industries (rockets and cars), walked in and said, "what's so difficult about this then?" Then urinated upon the incumbent big players from a very large height, in a very short time. It's all rather impressive.
Admittedly he's also put a cheese into orbit, so I guess wacky does apply somewhat...
I'm really disappointed that he didn't put some port into orbit to go with it - major logistical screw-up there. But I hope he invited some friends round for dinner, and then proceeded to produce the world's most amazing cheeseboard. There's one-in-the-eye for your fellow billionaires!
Reckon he didn't know that it didn't actually transform when he bought it, and now he's pissed but you can't return auction purchases and now he's going to make it happen to save face.
I'm picturing Musk and his buddies standing around, half drunk, and ramping the car into a lake, only to be disappointed and when it sinks and being laughed at. Don't laugh at the man who builds his own rockets he thinks...
Your down-votes fall upon me like a gentle summer shower...
Bear in mind that this piece of priceless movie memorabilia was so treasured and sought-after that the container it had been chucked into after filming was completed was sold in 1989 with no-body knowing what was stored inside.
Should we put all movie props in a museum? It'll have to be a big one. How about we just treasure the films, and let the near-autistic male collector gene wither and die like the disease it is?
GJC
I see you've decided he's a Bruce Wayne / Tony Stark good billionaire.
This is of course a possibility. However given his interest in rockets and monorails (well vacuum tube railways is close enough...) - I beg to suggest that we need to consider the alternative here. I'm afraid it's nominative determinism all over again. If you give someone a supervillain's name, such as Elon Musk, then you really can't be surprised when he goes off the rails and tries to destroy the world.
When the super-mutated-killer bacteria from his 'flying cheese into space' experiment start wiping out humanity, don't say I didn't warn you!
What's that? 5 black Tesla Roadsters have just pulled up outside? OHHHH SHHHHIIIIII......
....
....
....
....
They don't run on lithium batteries, the MSDS of which states that your not supposed to put them in airtight containers as they need to be able to vent hydrogen when both charging and discharging iirc. If the hydrogen can't escape and builds up enough pressure it hits the point where it combusts, at which point you've constructed a delayed action time bomb.
Unfortunately yes it would short out at any significant voltage- the electric would just arc through it to the water. Might work with low-voltage PCBs, but then there are already waterproofing agents for those.
When electronics are to be put under water, though, they're typically either put in a 'dry' housing or in an oil-filled container of some sort. A 'dry' housing means they can be kept in any environment you want (typically sea-level pressures with regular air) but is expensive. Oil-filled boxes are cheap but mean the electronics see the full pressure of the water (so you either have a pretty limited depth before things break (up to 50m is generally possible with regular 'home' electronics that don't include electrolytic caps) or have to modify the electronics to remove 'crushable' components like crystals).
An 'oil-filled and compensated' 3-phase motor could hit the bottom of the Challenger Deep and still work fine as it's just a block of metal with another block of metal inside it, with the void filled with oil and so is more or less incompressible.
The body of the Lotus, however, would have to be foot-thick Titanium to keep the driver safe from the pressure (at that depth, about 32,000psi!)!
The esprit is just a fibreglass cover over a X form frame, pretty adaptable for projects like this.
Making the body watertight and strengthening it to cope with the pressures is do-able for a man of his resources, and sealing up the drivetrain also.
The layout of the esprit lends itself to this too, its rear/mid engine means adapting a different transaxle that can be sealed is easier, and plenty of battery root around the engine bay to replace the exploding super leaky petrol tanks. As for damaging a icon, pass me the hacksaw, I'll make the first cuts for you :)
I owned a fire damaged esprit for 3 days after a cheeky £25 ebay bid won it, I bought it for the adaptable running gear (which I still have, underneath my nova kitcar bodyshell with a rover v8 and renault un1 transaxle), and we were amazed at how easy it was to detach the shell complete, which I'd sold on to a lotus dealer covering all of my costs to purchase the car with.
All power to mr musk, I wish I had the resources to play with interesting stuff like he does.
I think he should buy up Steam/Valve and Finally get the bastards to release half life 3!!!.
While he's at it, he can work on manufacturing some holographic satellites that can project the 3d images anywhere. Oh, this would also be awesome for mmorpg's! And exclusive access to steampowered to run the holo 3d games?
Ok I outed my idea. Need to make that work, I have ideas on that also.
But yea, well, theres always the idea of buying up the game platform and perhaps a oh, 3d video card company, and creating a market to buy into.
But hay, i'm just going on now.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
