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Tesla's Elon Musk goes 'Iron Man' with in-thin-air, gestural design process

The Tesla Motors/SpaceX CEO and all-around mad scientist tweets that he and his team have figured out how to design rocket parts in midair, with hand gestures.

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Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.
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Elon Musk -- er, Tony Stark -- pulls a suit of armor out of thin air. Marvel Studios/Paramount Pictures

As if a sexy electric car; a sideways-flying, reusable rocket ship; an 800 mph subway; and a Martian metropolis weren't enough, mad scientist Elon Musk now wants to build an "Iron Man" suit.

Well, not exactly.

But the film was apparently the inspiration for Musk's latest foray into science nonfiction. The Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO tweeted on Friday that he and his people have "figured out how to design rocket parts just w hand movements through the air" and that next week he'll be posting a video that demonstrates the process.

Musk, of course, is the man behind the Tesla Model S, the Grasshopper laterally flying rocket, and the Hyperloop supertrain. He's also an advocate for colonizing Mars.

 

Musk was asked by "Iron Man" director Jon Favreau, via Twitter, if the in-thin-air design process would be like the holographic routine depicted in the film (see clip below). Musk replied, "Yup. We saw it in the movie and made it real. Good idea!"

We're looking forward to next week's video.

(Via Business Insider)