Last week Elon Musk gleefully tweeted that he had invented a way to create rocket parts virtually out of thin air, with gesture control and a laser printer, and that he would soon post a video of him doing just that.In the video, Musk demonstrates how he combines a string of the most sci-fi-come-true technologies out there—the Oculus Rift, Leap Motion 3D controllers, holograms—to invent a way to engineer a rocket engine without actually touching it—a system he says is "going to revolutionize design and manufacturing in the 21st century."Musk starts out the demonstration using gesture control to zoom, rotate, and interact with a complicated CAD model of a rocket engine on a computer. Next, the model is freed from the screen, and projected in 3D in the air. SpaceX designers use hand movements to spin, move, and interact with the hologram floating in front of them—a straight up real-world manifestation of the futuristic interfaces in Minority Report and Iron Man.This way, the engineers can see all the sides of the part they're designing instead of a two-dimensional model on a computer screen, Musk explains in the video. The logic is, it's more intuitive to figure out how to make an object work, rather than how to make a computer make an object work."Right now we interact with computers in a very unnatural, 2D way," says Musk. "And we try to create these 3D objects using a variety of 2D tools. And it just doesn't feel natural—it doesn't feel normal, the way you should do things."
It gets better. Next Musk goes full-on into immersive virtual reality with the Oculus Rift. Now, the engineers can tinker with a model of the object, imagined and designed in three dimensions, that feels like it's real and right there in front of them. Then with a 3D laser printer that prints in metal, they take the model out of virtual reality and, voilà, print it into actual, titanium reality.None of the tools Musk's using are themselves new, though are at the cutting edge of technology. The innovative thing SpaceX has done here is in creating a way to integrate the preexisting technologies to make it possible to take a concept in your mind and intuitively actualize it into being. That way of thinking, Musk says, will lead to a breakthrough in design and engineering.It's also just damn cool, just like sideways-flying reusable rockets, Martians, electric cars, and a supersonic Hyperloop are damn cool. As Musk says, he never grows tired of finding ways to turn science fiction into reality. Which is more or less what willed SpaceX's new futuristic design process into being: Last week, Musk tweeted at Iron Man's Favreau that they "saw it in the movie and made it real."
Well, the video's out, fully vindicating the SpaceX founder as the real-world Tony Stark. (It's true: Musk was Iron Man director Jon Favreau's inspiration for his depiction of the superhero.)We figured out how to design rocket parts just w hand movements through the air (seriously). Now need a high frame rate holograph generator.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 23, 2013
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It gets better. Next Musk goes full-on into immersive virtual reality with the Oculus Rift. Now, the engineers can tinker with a model of the object, imagined and designed in three dimensions, that feels like it's real and right there in front of them. Then with a 3D laser printer that prints in metal, they take the model out of virtual reality and, voilà, print it into actual, titanium reality.None of the tools Musk's using are themselves new, though are at the cutting edge of technology. The innovative thing SpaceX has done here is in creating a way to integrate the preexisting technologies to make it possible to take a concept in your mind and intuitively actualize it into being. That way of thinking, Musk says, will lead to a breakthrough in design and engineering.It's also just damn cool, just like sideways-flying reusable rockets, Martians, electric cars, and a supersonic Hyperloop are damn cool. As Musk says, he never grows tired of finding ways to turn science fiction into reality. Which is more or less what willed SpaceX's new futuristic design process into being: Last week, Musk tweeted at Iron Man's Favreau that they "saw it in the movie and made it real."