OTA update: https://www.local10.com/business/2023/12/13/tesla-recalls-over-2-million-vehicles-to-fix-defective-system-that-monitors-drivers-using-autopilot/

Seeing an annular eclipse is an excellent application of orbital mechanics! Enjoy!

Drop a ball. It goes fastest just before and after it hits the ground, and slows down until it gets back to near the height you dropped it from

The probe is the ball, and slingshotting around the sun is like bouncing off the ground. The potential energy (height of ball/distance from sun) gets converted to and from kinetic energy (speed).

They’ve since corrected it:

Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that the max apogee of the flight was 49.7 miles. In fact, the VSS Unity reached a max altitude of 55 miles.

Autopilot on freeways? Definitely better than the average driver. FSD on freeways? Same thing. I rely on those constantly, and also get frustrated when people complain about AP being unsafe.

FSD on streets? Definitely still worse than the average driver, at least in places that don’t have perfectly laid out street grids and properly painted lane lines which is what I deal with. I can’t make it through a drive on streets without disengaging multiple times.

The problem is these three different things get lumped together in conversations/articles all the time.