visit to Austin Gigafactory

[aerohead]

On April 6, I rendezvoused with AeroStealth and wife in Austin, Texas. They were coming in from a visit to Space-X at Boca Chica, Texas.
On the morning of the 7th, we drove out to the Tesla, Texas Gigafactory construction site.
It was quite the beehive of activity. The initial building going up, we were told, is structurally complete. All employees present signed the last piece of structural steel. The roof is on. No walls. About a dozen cranes are loading in materials through the open envelope. From our vantage point there were three levels visible.
It's the largest building I've ever seen. ' looks like four World Trade Center Towers could lie next to one another inside it. The drone footage online just doesn't convey the scale of it.
Anyway, the trip constitutes my latest significant contribution to global warming.

[redpoint5]

Eat 3 pieces of local, organic, sustainable, vegetables and recite Hail Mother Earth 10x, and your sins will be atoned before Almighty Nature.

May you always find favor and a tailwind with her.

[aerohead]

Down there you've got to worry about some Wicca witch dragging your --- into a sweat lodge near Hippie Hollow Park and doing ---- --- knows what!

[Piotrsko]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Down there you've got to worry about some Wicca witch dragging your --- into a sweat lodge near Hippie Hollow Park and doing ---- --- knows what!

I hear that ends up being a pleasant experience after they expel your conservative trendencies. The herb tea is nice too.

[freebeard]

The drone footage online just doesn't convey the scale of it.

They're still one of my favorite things on Youtube. I used to work in construction and it's fun to watch it done on such a massive scale.

One thing I don't understand is that they have acres of roof and a drain line you could drive a Tesla through, but no sign of gutters and downspouts.

[redpoint5]

Rain water goes straight into the trunk of the vehicles they are building.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PQWItMpBho&t=1m8s

[aerohead]

Seems like proper drainage would be predicated upon having the hatch / lid closed during a rain ? Nut behind the wheel ?

[JSH]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Seems like proper drainage would be predicated upon having the hatch / lid closed during a rain ? Nut behind the wheel ?

I don't stop my daily activities when it rains. I should be able to load items into the truck in a rainstorm without water from the roof draining into the trunk

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by JSH

I don't stop my daily activities when it rains. I should be able to load items into the truck in a rainstorm without water from the roof draining into the trunk

I get it.
One thing which is not obvious, and approaches a parlor trick:
Rain doesn't 'do' what is demonstrated in the video.
* In a 'real rain, there is a 'spatial' distribution to raindrops.
* In a real rain, there is a 'temporal' distribution to raindrops.
* Rain doesn't fall as a single point source, and it doesn't fall as a steady stream, continuously, at a single location.
* If the glazing has any crown to it, accumulated water will be dispersed tangentially away from the center, where the 'overshoot' would occur.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by aerohead

I get it.
One thing which is not obvious, and approaches a parlor trick:
Rain doesn't 'do' what is demonstrated in the video.
* In a 'real rain, there is a 'geographic' distribution to raindrops.
* In a real rain, there is a 'temporal' distribution to raindrops.
* Rain doesn't fall as a single point source, and it doesn't fall as a steady stream, continuously, at a single location.
* If the glazing has any crown to it, accumulated water will be dispersed tangentially away from the center, where the 'overshoot' would occur.

The demonstration was to highlight the effect, not to reproduce a typical downpour. Plenty of Tesla fans have complained of water infiltrating their trunk in a way that isn't so prevalent in other vehicles.