John Kraus
@johnkrausphotos • 346,828 subscribers
Capturing and sharing the stories behind the most exciting moments in spaceflight. Special Communications Assistant to the Administrator at @NASA 🌎🚀🌕🇺🇸
Shorts
Videos
FSD v14.1: INCREDIBLE. My car drove me across multiple highways en route to the Orlando airport, where it entered the parking garage, parked, exited, and perfectly executed the ticket booth interaction - without ANY input from me. It handled other cars and a construction worker on a ladder. It knew to not enter the reserved floor of the garage, which was blocked by a gate. It also ignored floors with “level full” signs, although this might be a coincidence given it went straight to the top level. I routed it to a nearby Supercharger, it flawlessly exited the garage, and it drove to the charger, where as expected, it parked flawlessly. My car could not do this yesterday. Overnight, it received a software update to enable this new behavior. You have to experience this to truly appreciate it. Incredible.
John Kraus1,801,331 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
FSD v14.1: Magic. FSD navigates rush-hour Orlando traffic from downtown to Winter Park, perfectly parallel parking in a tight spot right in front of its destination. It then routes to a Supercharger, parking automatically. It even kindly creeped forward to allow a car behind me to fit into a turn lane. Zero input. Magic.
John Kraus1,743,835 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
FSD v14.1 yields to an ambulance using the opposite lane to bypass traffic After hearing and seeing the ambulance behind me, FSD began creeping into the adjacent right lane, but another vehicle blocked me from moving farther. FSD then paused, allowing the ambulance to pass, before continuing. I’m not sure a human driver could’ve handled this much differently — there was nowhere to go short of flooring it to get in front of the car to my right, which in my view would have felt reckless in case the ambulance needed to get into that gap. Simply creeping a bit to the right, pausing and waiting, knowing the ambulance had already committed to driving against the flow of traffic, seems like the safest move. Either way, this is a significant improvement over prior versions! Your thoughts?
John Kraus198,390 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
Walking along the Road to Mars as Ship 34 rolls to the pad for Starship Flight 8
John Kraus289,185 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
FSD v14.1: 69 miles from Florida’s Space Coast to Orlando The car handled the entire route perfectly, including a stop I added along the way, and attempted to park at the end of the drive. It did so smoothly, but incorrectly parked along a yellow curb where parking is not permitted. (One might note that the first autonomous customer delivery did the same thing in Austin 🙂.) Probably fine for a quick Robotaxi drop off… A quick manual parking at the end was the only driving input I had during the whole drive. Had I been in the backseat with no driver or monitor, I would’ve been safe and comfortable. Great progress Tesla AI team! Still figuring out the ideal camera configuration - this was shot on iPhone and I accidentally zoomed in a tad using my watch’s Digital Crown mid-drive, hence the shift in the middle.
John Kraus127,692 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
It was such an honor to help design this “Snap” coin that flew alongside four crew coins on the Polaris Dawn mission and an even greater honor to see it fly to space. Thank you to our artist friend Erin Bonilla for beautifully turning this idea into reality. I was so blown away when the crew graciously offered this opportunity - thank you - I can’t wait to put the flown coin on display and will cherish it forever. Some insight on the design: The seven stars represent the seven astronauts I have been lucky to befriend from Inspiration4 to Polaris Dawn: Jared, Sian, Hayley, Chris, Kidd, Sarah, and Anna. My silhouette is seen capturing a Falcon 9 rising in front of sunrise, based off one of my all-time favorite photos, but with the fairing swapped out for a Dragon. Other elements include palm trees and birds representing my appreciation for the local Florida nature around the Cape. In the video you can see the flown coin floating in space. Earlier in the mission it reached new heights in Earth orbit during a crewed mission and then was exposed to the vacuum of space during the mission’s spacewalk. The still image is another unit, not flown, captured a few months ago when I saw the coin in-person for the first time. I have kept it on my person for much of the last few months as a good luck token and reminder of the exciting space program whose stories I am lucky to help share. I had it with me all throughout launch day and on the VAB roof during liftoff, knowing that a copy - and a small part of me - was joining the crew in space. Many were made, and one each for the four crew and myself flew - but each coin has a small magnetic insert that pops out. Hundreds of those smaller inserts flew, and we will be able to pop in those small flown parts into the non-flown coins, such that hundreds of coins will have a part that flew. Thanks Jared Isaacman for the video! So cool - forever grateful.
John Kraus281,104 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
FSD v14.1 Parking spot to Supercharger The car handled a parking lot, pedestrians, and a stopped car waiting for a drive-thru line before getting on the highway en route to a Supercharger, where it parks automatically in the stall! Zero interventions. Rain or shine.
John Kraus107,819 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
Reaction video to the first-ever Super Heavy catch… this is what I live for — when a history-defining moment in spaceflight becomes a memory and is immortalized through our imagery, forever… I am so grateful to chase these thrills with the best of friends. D Wise
John Kraus156,804 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
FSD v14.1: Parking has seen a step change improvement from v13 to v14, including at Superchargers. One area not yet fully-solved is parking at slanted pull-through stalls. But after about an hour of trying, I finally got it to work! The most frequent issues: - overshooting the row of slanted chargers and parking at a non-charging spot past the chargers - successfully parking at a slanted stall but not pulling in far enough In some instances, the car would overshoot the slanted chargers, park at a slanted non-charger spot nearby, go into park, automatically reroute itself to the opposite row, and back into a traditional back-in spot. It did this on a handful of occasions. The same behavior was possible after parking with me rerouting to the charger on the screen and reengaging FSD, but most of the time it went all the way around the parking lot before trying and failing again. This is a significant improvement from even just yesterday morning, when the car tried to back in straight in between two slanted spots! In ~20 attempts this afternoon, I didn’t experience this once. Anecdotally, across my attempts today, the car seemed to get a bit better each time… but it’s hard to say whether or not it’s learning on the fly locally. Ashok Elluswamy - any insight? 🙂 I have no doubt the Tesla AI team will solve this case given how much progress has been shown with v14.1 already. Keep up the great work!
John Kraus72,509 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
![“Once you overcame some of the intimidation factor of being in that environment, I thought this is an arena I can be helpful in for all the right reasons. […] It was a perspective I was thankful to have.” Hear from Jared Isaacman about politics, space, aviation, business and more in this great interview with Glenn Beck 🇺🇸](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1946611788042076186/amplify_video_thumb/1946611671931211776/img/UlfmmTDdqiNvnjtF.jpg)
“Once you overcame some of the intimidation factor of being in that environment, I thought this is an arena I can be helpful in for all the right reasons. […] It was a perspective I was thankful to have.” Hear from Jared Isaacman about politics, space, aviation, business and more in this great interview with Glenn Beck 🇺🇸
John Kraus82,879 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten
FSD v14.1: Great progress with parking lots, pedestrians and cyclists, parking, and school zones. Some small hiccups. Clips below: — Recognizes cyclist amidst construction comes, moves over, cyclist waves and says “thank you” ✅ — Courteous but overly cautious pedestrian interactions with some brake taps, exits shopping center and executes unprotected left turn before smoothly crossing across lanes to make short-range right turn ⚠️✅ — Pulls into shopping center and takes first available parking spot ✅ — Backs out of parking spot, recognizes rear cross traffic, yields, and then resumes pulling out of spot after rear cross traffic allows FSD to proceed. Exits parking lot and completes unprotected left turn ✅ — Navigates shopping center parking lot with pedestrians and takes first available parking spot ✅ — Exits shopping center parking lot and executes a u-turn from a stop sign amidst other traffic at intersection ✅ — Recognizes flashing school zone sign from a great distance, slows to appropriate speed, then speeds up upon seeing “end school zone” sign ✅ — Recognizes flashing school zone sign, slows down, but then speeds up, likely upon falsely interpreting road-painted “school” marking as indication that the school zone ended. Disengagement. ✅❌ Sentience is increasing!
John Kraus43,895 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
When asked for his ideas for how to better promote NASA and its upcoming missions to the Moon and Mars in efforts to inspire young people, Jared Isaacman calls inspiring the next generation a “fundamental obligation” of the agency. He notes that the agency should focus on quality over quantity in terms of NASA’s storytelling efforts on social media and beyond: “I think we could do a better job, if confirmed, on emphasizing quality content over quantity.” Isaacman points out that there’s hundreds of NASA channels across social media that put out great things, but that we can “narrow that down and make sure we’re capturing the really inspirational footage, what everybody wants to see, that inspires them to grow up and want to reach even higher.” I agree. 🇺🇸
John Kraus51,062 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
It’s great to see such passion lately for space exploration - our nation is on a path to go back to the Moon and onward to Mars! Can’t wait to see Jared Isaacman leading the charge at NASA to usher America into its next golden age of space exploration. And in doing so, we’ll make life better on Earth. I think a lot about Jared’s words as he exited his spacecraft during the first-ever commercial spacewalk last year: “Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world.” I am hopeful Senate Commerce Republicans and Ted Cruz will soon hold a vote with the whole U.S. Senate to enable Jared to get to work ASAP!
John Kraus35,821 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
