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Imagining “Fun” on a SpaceX Mars Trip in the Interplanetary Transport System

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In Elon’s recent announcement about SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System, he spoke about the long journey to Mars being fun and exciting with amenities such as movies, games, lecture halls, and a restaurant. For fun, I took to Tinkercad (online 3D modeling software – try it out if you haven’t already) to envision a few things of my own in the spirit of his “fun” suggestion.

The Interplanetary Transport System Crew Cabin

Here’s the model I put together to get the imagination juices going…

Note: I’m aware that my model of the crew cabin isn’t perfect. Give me a break! I was working with a short fly-through video and software intended for making toys. And I was just having fun. The general idea has still been captured.

Coffee Bar

I cannot for the life of me imagine making a three-to-six month journey to Mars without caffeine input. Plus, if you’re truly talking interplanetary, there will be no discussion on the matter. Pluto tourists have their demands.

Interplanetary Transport System - coffee bar.

My preferred source is from the lovely makers of Red Bull; however, I’ll take a Starbucks Venti Carmel Macchiato, hot (with an extra shot of espresso) as a close runner up.

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Interplanetary Transport System - coffee bar.

That being said, a coffee station would be a must. Oh, and there should be plenty of dispensers because lines suck.

Food Station

Interplanetary Transport System - food station.Elon mentioned a restaurant, which is great for sit down dinners under the stars and all, but what about those days when you just want something quick so you can get back to Oolon Colluphid’s Where God Went Wrong? You’d need some sort of food station for that, and I imagine it might look something like one of those old pie dispensers that used to frequent Grand Central Station.Interplanetary Transport System - food station.

Actually, I’ve heard they still have “Vending Machine Restaurants” in certain places in the world. This might not be much different. Except for payment because after a $200,000 ticket, my damn meals better be included.

Interplanetary Transport System - food station.Note: Someone mentioned to me that tables and chairs were moot because, well, space. But I’ve seen enough videos of astronauts chasing their food down to anticipate a desire for a “Velcro-ed” type surface to attach your runaway shrimp cocktail to (an astronaut favorite). Hence, the pull-out tables under the dispenser.

Centrifuge Gym

Since future Martian colonial travelers will need to maintain their strength for their surface arrival, a physical fitness regimen is likely to be a “must” for most; however, in space gravity (that was a misleading phrase, I know), exercise is going to eat up a lot of “fun” time because it takes so long to achieve results in zero gravity.Interplanetary Transport System - space gym.

I imagine having an optional centrifuge gym wherein equipment is attached to the inside of a spinning ring might help. The additional imitation gravity could make the workout more effective.

My version here is obviously pretty bulky, but what my patience lacks, I’m sure an engineer could overcome by making something slimmer.

 

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Spray Park

Okay, this one might just be clouds in my coffee, but wouldn’t it be awesome?

Liquids behave super funky in zero gravity – then imagine them being sprayed everywhere while you floated around through obstacle course rings. You could put money on there being amusing YouTube videos coming out of that one.

The whole thing would be a portable setup and would be enclosed by some sort of sheeting material, of course. Not everyone wants blobs of H2O surprising them during brunch. There could be “Water Park Wednesdays” or something. Good times a comin’.

Interplanetary Transport System - spray park.

Well, that’s what I’ve got for now! I truly enjoyed designing this stuff. I highly recommend it.

P.S. If you’d like to give your own ideas a whirl without totally starting from scratch, all the models I’ve presented here are publicly available under a “Sharealike” license on Tinkercad’s website. Let’s imagine together!

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Onwards.

Accidental computer geek, fascinated by most history and the multiplanetary future on its way. Quite keen on the democratization of space. | It's pronounced day-sha, but I answer to almost any variation thereof.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got way more specific

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Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”

In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.


When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”

The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”

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Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.

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Cybertruck

Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love

Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.

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Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.

The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”

The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.

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The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.

Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more

It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat

Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.

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tesla diner

Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.

One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”

Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions

 

What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.

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As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.

If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.

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