Elon Musk's Twitter Account Stirs Up Controversy, This Time About Autonomous Boats

Early Monday morning on the East Coast, or late Sunday evening on the West Coast, Elon Musk was on Twitter and wanted to make sure everyone knew about his autonomous recovery ship named "Of course I still love you." Musk replied to a story written by The Verge about a cargo ship that will operate without a crew by 2020 with a photo of his autonomous ship, designed for recovering his reusable rockets, with the phrase "Umm …" The vessel "Of course I still love you," is an ocean platform that Musk's company SpaceX calls an "autonomous spaceport drone ship." It's used as a landing platform for the first stages of rockets that launch heavy payloads to space and it is, as Musk pointed out, unmanned. The ship measures 300 feet by 100 feet and has wings attached to it that extend the width of it to 170 feet, says SpaceX. Additionally, the ship doesn't anchor while awaiting the rocket's first stage return, it relies on thrusters to keep it in place. While it does carry the 14 story tall rockets that have a landing span of 70 feet, it's not exactly a cargo ship.