A little over a week ago, SpaceX launched
its first-ever crewed mission into space, leaving our atmosphere on top of a
two-stage Falcon 9 rocket. This mission saw NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and
Doug Hurley head to the International Space Station (ISS) inside a Crew Dragon
capsule. While this is far from sci-fi, it was still a major step forward as
far as human technology is concerned.
So what does the future hold for our
species? We fear that’s way too lengthy of a conversation right now – but for
the sake of argument, if we do end up colonizing either the moon or Mars (or
both) in the far, far future, we’re going to need vehicles to get around, and
at one point those vehicles will need to be able to transport large amounts of
cargo.
The thing is, nobody’s flying over any
semi trucks to Mars anytime soon, or the moon for that matter. Odds are these
vehicles would need to be built (or at least assembled) on-site, which means
we’ll need the infrastructure to do that, and that’s who knows how many
decades away.
As for what such a truck could look like,
we’re really digging this design by Alex Imnadze Baldini. It’s fan art,
obviously, and it’s called the SpaceTruck, featuring SpaceX branding, as well
as Tesla logos. In terms of its appearance, it’s definitely futuristic enough.
However, one issue we have is the low ground clearance. You’re not driving over
Martian terrain in something that looks like it belongs in the Truck Racing
Championship of the future. But maybe a lift system would fix that issue – just
throwing that out there; otherwise you’d need paved roads and that’s not
happening anytime soon.
