The Cybertruck repeatedly was marketed as a 1970s spoiled rich kid dream of a vehicle for other planets.

And, like most 1970s marketing tricks targeting the lazy and uneducated, it has achieved only the trivially simple capability of going nowhere fast.

Meanwhile scientists working on hard reality have announced their $5B allocation to vehicle deployment choices for the moon.

NASA has selected Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab to advance capabilities for a lunar terrain vehicle (LTV) that Artemis astronauts will use to travel around the lunar surface…

Those names are unfamiliar to most, by design. Larger companies hedging big project risks have created disposable “booster” entities, so to speak, as small spinoffs obscure true contracts. Not long ago, however, it was the opposite, with Northop-Grumman, Boeing (McDonnell Douglas), Lockheed, Leidos and even General Motors more openly discussing this mission.

AVL, an industry-leader for the development, simulation, and testing of vehicle systems, will bring its expertise in the advancement of battery electric vehicles, autonomous driving, and propulsion solutions to make lunar surface mobility a reality.

Battery electric vehicles and autonomous driving. Ok, then.

In this early phase of the lunar project parade, I honestly expected the attention-addicted “where do you want to go” Microsoft execs to throw their hat in the ring.

One small step for Windows XP… that probably should have been fired into the sun instead.

Again, notably absent, has been the Tesla clown show that delivered the fiction-based Cybertruck dud, which can’t even operate on earth.