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SpaceX Plans To Blast a Tesla Roadster Into Orbit Around Mars (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:
Previously, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said he intends to launch the "silliest thing we can imagine" on the maiden launch of the Falcon Heavy. This is partly because the rocket is experimental -- there is a non-trivial chance the rocket will explode on the launch pad, or shortly after launch. It is also partly because Musk is a master showman who knows how to grab attention. On Friday evening, Musk tweeted what that payload would be -- his "midnight cherry Tesla Roadster."
And the car will be playing Space Oddity, by David Bowie; the song which begins, "Ground Control to Major Tom." Oh, and the powerful Falcon Heavy rocket will send the Tesla into orbit around Mars. "Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn't blow up on ascent," Musk added. Ars was able to confirm Friday night from a company source that this is definitely a legitimate payload. Earlier on Friday, Musk also said the Falcon Heavy launch would come "next month" from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, meaning in January.
"No private company has ever launched a spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit, let alone to another planet," according to the article, adding that SpaceX's new rocket "could play a major role in any plans the agency has to send humans to the Moon." In addition, Musk added on Twitter, "Red car for a red planet."
UPDATE (12/2/17): Saturday Elon Musk told The Verge that he "totally made it up" about sending a Tesla Roadster to Mars. Then in "multiple emails" to Ars Technica --- sent Saturday afternoon -- "Musk confirmed that this plan is, indeed, real."
And the car will be playing Space Oddity, by David Bowie; the song which begins, "Ground Control to Major Tom." Oh, and the powerful Falcon Heavy rocket will send the Tesla into orbit around Mars. "Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn't blow up on ascent," Musk added. Ars was able to confirm Friday night from a company source that this is definitely a legitimate payload. Earlier on Friday, Musk also said the Falcon Heavy launch would come "next month" from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, meaning in January.
"No private company has ever launched a spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit, let alone to another planet," according to the article, adding that SpaceX's new rocket "could play a major role in any plans the agency has to send humans to the Moon." In addition, Musk added on Twitter, "Red car for a red planet."
UPDATE (12/2/17): Saturday Elon Musk told The Verge that he "totally made it up" about sending a Tesla Roadster to Mars. Then in "multiple emails" to Ars Technica --- sent Saturday afternoon -- "Musk confirmed that this plan is, indeed, real."
please buckle Trump into the driver's seat before launch
So Marvin the Martian is wealthy and is well up the reserve list for a Roadster? What's the Muskrat getting in return, an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator?
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
So, I clicked on the comments section thinking, "A private company launching the highest payload rocket since the Saturn V, with game-changing launch costs even without reuse, designed to land on barges and landing pads, and rather than risking a super-expensive satellite on the maiden launch, they're doing it in the most hilarious manner possible, at the CEO's expense? There's no way anyone is going to be turning this into a negative!"
Hello Slashdot. Thanks for finding new ways to disappoint.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
Space is big. One car doesn't make a "stunt laden dumping ground".
...from gumming up the future space lanes of Mars. We already have a huge amount of space junk around our own planet. Do we really want to turn Mars into a publicity stunt laden dumping ground?
There's got to be a law against this somewhere...
Given that there is space junk already in orbit around mars I think you might have missed the boat with your fauxrage
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
This is the first launch of the Falcon Heavy. They're not getting a paying customer until they can prove that the rocket works. That means they don't have any important payload, so why not pull a stunt like this?
Well, they will have to do some work to make sure any liquids or gasses in the vehicle don't cause explosions and mess up the test. Obviously they need to remove the valve stems on the tires, but they'll have to look at lots of other fluids and places where air is trapped to be sure it won't be a problem.
Of course, there are other things they could launch. Perhaps they could do a resupply to the ISS--one of the few launches where the cargo isn't as expensive as the launch. They could also stage some supplies for a future Mars mission in Mars orbit. But if doing something like that would delay the launch as they prepare the payload, it might not be worth it.
They are f-ing with you. Space is fake. The Earth is flat. The eclipses prove it. Try getting a gyroscope to show you the spinning of Earth.
"Dude! You need to get laid. Bad!" - Steve Stiffler
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Well, he's putting it into a parking orbit around Mars for now. The first human Mars mission will rendezvous with the car, load it into the spaceship, and bring it down so they can drive around on the surface.
There is no more male idea in the history of the Universe, than "why don't we fly up to Mars and drive around - Jerry Seinfeld
#DeleteFacebook
Would progress happen any faster if we weren't allowed to make snarky comments about St Elon of Musk here?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
A trip to Mars is like life. It's not the destination, but rather, the journey. The information we learn from building rockets and actually launching them is important for technological progress. Landing men on the moon was nothing. The process of getting them there, and the knowledge we gained as a result, was everything. "If people spent 10% the amount of time thinking about how to improve life on Earth and they do about living on Mars we would be better off" is a false dichotomy. Mars living is a technological problem. Social issues on Earth are social issues. Sorry, but you STILL can't solve many social issues with technology. I would argue that we are spending too much on social issues, since there is never going to be a solution to them without further advancement of technology. How would they be? They won't be solved with philosophical discussion.
In which case why not launch something useful? I realise he doesn't want to risk a commercial satellite but he could launch fuel. Or he could get a bunch of cube sats and put those into orbit, assuming the launch works.
Or he could talk to Robert Zubrin and ask him what's the best thing to launch to keep in reserve for a future Mars Direct like program given a) it's a free launch but b) there's a high risk of mission failure
Zubrin gave a memorable presentation here
The Case For Mars | Robert Zubrin
I bet if you asked him he could come up with something that'd be handy to have in Mars orbit and also wouldn't be a disaster if it got blown up on launch.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I agree, going to Mars is a useless stunt. Developing cheap rockets is very useful. If SpaceX needs the Mars dream to get motivated to build cheap rockets, it's still a good deal.
How we long for 1997, when we only wished stuff like this would happen.
We aren't going to be able to live on Mars, ever.
Maybe so, but if we do at least we'll have a nice car to drive around. Maybe he'll send up a fancy boat on the next launch.
... the most valuable car in the solar system.
Assuming it is (still) in a âoeparkingâ orbit (ha ha) around Mars and assuming that Mankind survives and prospers enough to colonize Mars, thatâ(TM)ll be one heck of a collectors item!
It should be in mint(?) condition and, because itâ(TM)s electric, might actually work on planets without oxygen (the driver will need to wear a spacesuit of course).
Then again, if it put into a stable parking orbit and presumably not âoelostâ or abandoned, are there any salvage rights? Call in the space lawyers! (Be careful though, their fees are astronomical!)
Got to wonder how the tires will hold up being frozen for that long...
unless they put some of those cool spring metal wheels on it...
http://bgr.com/2017/11/26/nasa-airless-tire-no-flat/
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Boo hoo. The guy makes his own rocket, and his own car, and you're telling him he can't do with it whatever he wants ?
Is building a heavy launch vehicle an ego trip as well, according you you? Normally first launches like this have just a dummy load: bags of sand or whatever else can make up sufficient payload. If somebody wants to stretch the goals by adding a car to this dummy load and aiming for Mars in this first launch, I fail to see why that deserves so much grousing. Personally I think it is a waste of a perfectly fine car, but hey, he built the thing himself, and he seems to like to have fun with things like this, so who am I to judge him on that.
You apparently haven't ever used a telescope. Ships do not "disappear into the mist". You could do this every day from the same location watching a ship go over the horizon and it would disappear at the same time same place despite weather conditions (humidity, etc). Or are you saying the phenomenon of them "disappearing" into the mists is permanent and not dependent on weather conditions, and there's some aspect of the air that enforces the same disappearing distance? To further your experiment (warning: evil science! quick, back to youtube for a self affirming dose of videos) what happens if you watch the ship disappear then climb up a hill or tower and look at it? Will it be in the same location?
Just to makes sure there's no devilry or mind control from NASA at play here, station trusted sources on both the ship and ships in between the test barge to make sure everything is on the level. (Or not, pun intended)
If he drives it back to Earth with a parachute, it'd be like the opening!
You beat me to it, that was my first thought upon reading the summary. Gotta watch out for the Loc-Nar though.
I wonder what kind of Auto Insurance Musk has...
A Tesla Roadster is about to become the fastest car ever made.
If the earth would be flat than we would have sunrise for all at the same time. Or no sunrise at all (in the spotlight model). Furthermore, you can test the earth curvature when looking over the ocean. Do this from high enough altitude, use your best telescope and then try to see the Eifel tower from New York. Also you can follow ships and when the water is cold you can see that the first thing to go on any ship is the lower parts and the chimney/sail can be seen for a longer time.
There is also another experiment. Have a friend who lives south or north (1000 km at least) of your place. Build two tables and insert into this a stick upright. Then place one table at your home and one at his home. The table must be perfectly horizontal. Now you collect for half a year from highest to lowest position of the sun the angle between the sun and the surface. You can do this by measuring the length of the shadow and calculating the arc with acos((l_shadow + l_stick - sqrt(l_shadow + l_stick))/( 2 * l_shadow * l_stick)). With the two angles and the distance between you and your friend, you can calculate the distance of the sun in your flat earth model and subsequently its heights above the surface. According to flat earth idea, it should be always at approx. 4000 something km.
Also you can make this experiment as follows. Use a friend east of you (the farer away the better). Every day you see a sunrise, you write down the angle between ground and sun. And at the same time your friend takes a measurement (call him and synchronize your efforts). On a flat earth you should experience sunrise at the same time. On a spherical earth this will happen at different points in time. Anyway, for your flat model, the height of the sun should be the same.
he would just seem to be firing off extremely expensive rockets for his own amusement
The primary goal is testing a heavy lift reusable rocket that can be used to bring heavy satellites in Earth orbit for profit. In order to test the rocket, he needs a cheap dummy payload. The only "amusement" part is using an old car instead of a bag of rocks. The rest of the plan is business.
1997 was when Pathfinder landed on Mars, the first lander to do so in 30 years and the first rover on Mars. The Hubble was hitting its stride and the ISS began construction a year later. It was an exciting time for actual space science.
There are about 5,000 people in Antarctica, despite it being an environment that will never be suitable for human habitation. Someday, perhaps next century, there will be a similar number of people on Mars for similar reasons.
This space intentionally left blank
So, I clicked on the comments section thinking, "A private company launching the highest payload rocket since the Saturn V, with game-changing launch costs even without reuse, designed to land on barges and landing pads, and rather than risking a super-expensive satellite on the maiden launch, they're doing it in the most hilarious manner possible, at the CEO's expense? There's no way anyone is going to be turning this into a negative!"
Hello Slashdot. Thanks for finding new ways to disappoint.
You left out the biggest positive for Tesla: They can announce an option that increases your range by millions of miles on a single charge...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I was referring to the attitude on Slashdot.
Go back and read some of the comments on the stories about those things. Compare to this one.
Very plausible explanations, if we were stuck with only 16th century theories and equipment. Maybe you should try convincing the Amish instead of a bunch of nerds?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Antarctica has air and water, even food, a pleasant climate and is very accessible.
In which case why not launch something useful? I realise he doesn't want to risk a commercial satellite but he could launch fuel.
Pro tip: if you suspect that your launch vehicle stands a higher-than-usual chance of blowing up, don't launch stuff that is going to increase the blast radius or be unsuitable as a new artificial reef in the ocean off Florida.
Or he could get a bunch of cube sats and put those into orbit, assuming the launch works.
...but which will still leave a bunch of dissatisfied customers, sunk costs and bad publicity if it doesn't.
Even if this ends in a fireball, Musk wants to be able to present it as a "learning experience": try and launch anything useful and it looks like a failure.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Given the risk in testing a brand new rocket configuration, one which Musk himself gives barely a 50/50 of clearing the pad and not damaging the launch tower, you don't want anything on that rocket that anyone is going to miss. You definitely don't want a payload of fuel making an even bigger boom. You don't want cube-sats that someone poured money and resources into in order to do research and gather data. The CEOs Roadster is exactly the kind of payload you want. Most would use just dummy mass... a cor works perfect as that, and allows them to have some media fun.d
So, how can I see the lights of the towers at Logan? Searching for those heights I've found 350 feet to be the maximum structure there.
It depends on your elevation as well, and the local curvature of the earth in your area. If you are on a "peak" and Logan is on a "peak" with a valley in between, there is no local curvature and you can see straight-line distances. Ah, why am I bothering?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
f people spent 10% the amount of time thinking about how to improve life on Earth and they do about living on Mars we would be better off.
If your solution to a problem is "the people need to change", then it probably isn't much of a solution. A trip to Mars, on the other hand, is a straightforward engineering challenge that people have a shot at. Space nutters are not the dreamers, utopia on Earth nutters are. You CAN put people on Mars. Given high enough technology, they may even live there. And they will probably - eventually - fight with each other, because they are people.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
a pleasant climate
Depends on the time of the year, and where you actually are.
And: you could say the same things about Mars. Around the equator it is actually quite nice.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
>> Do we really want to turn Mars into a publicity stunt laden dumping ground?
Yes. Yes we do.
The only way an average Joe is ever going to get affordable commercial space travel is if the "Only governments can do spaceflight" meme dies a fiery death. Putting a Tesla around Mars is a fantastic way to light that pyre.
If the BFR delivers on its promise of dirt-cheap space travel we can tidy up after ourselves later.
Now the question is how the truck will be arranged in the fairing? And then will it survive the vibration tests?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Elon has seen 'Heavy Metal' one time too many. He's not going to be able to land the car on Mars and drive it around. (Cosmic rays are sure to have fucked the electronics by then.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's bad enough that we got NASA's junk now littering the Martian landscape, but now we have private individuals throwing junk cars up there.
Caution: Contents under pressure
No, downmod both the GPP & zilym's for idiocy.
The Tesla will not be in earth orbit. It won't even be in Mars orbit. No orbital insertion burn into Mars orbit is possible as there is no third stage & the FH second stage will have long since died. Thus it'll be in orbit around the sun in an orbit somewhere between the Earth and Mars with virtually no chance of becoming a problem -- any more than the hundreds of thousands of like sized asteroids that occupy that space.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
An average person would have to work for years to buy that car (without eating while doing so). He will flaunt its destruction only to have people talk about him on twitter.
Normally first launches like this have just a dummy load: bags of sand or whatever else can make up sufficient payload
That's not even true. Where do you people come up with this nonsense? For example: The very first Saturn V launch carried a full Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
What is sad is that 3000lbs of scientific experiments will not get done. Elon, if you want to practice heavy lifting, at least get some value out of it if it works. I thought you were smart. Smart people don't waste precious opportunities.
They already have a battery
A trip to Mars, on the other hand, is a straightforward engineering challenge that people have a shot at
It's far from straightforward. Besides, even in the remotest fantasy that they could survive there, people will fuck it all up just the same.
To establish some kind of colony on Mars, we would need to know how to recycle everything; air, water, materials, biological waste products. packaging, energy efficient mining and manufacturing. Figure out all of those there, and doing them here comes for free.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
High speed trains? Everyone knows that humans would die from asphyxiation if they went faster than 20mph. Leave the high speed travel to the professional horsemen.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I seriously hope you are either trolling or playing some sort of prank.
We've gotten different technology. It isn't "more useful".
This could be the bursting of his bubble, which is nearing that point anyway.
Perhaps that is true for some folks, but only a small minority. I'd say most people barely even know that Musk exists, and most who do simply see him as an eccentric, geeky billionaire who builds cool toys for other rich people. (Kinda like Steve Jobs...) But even if he does "burst his bubble" with that minority of naysayers, the up-side of this kind of stunt, from a PR perspective, could be huge with the rest of the population.
This is the sort of stunt that gets you invited onto chat shows, where you'll have plenty of time to explain everything and answer questions. So from that perspective, I guess you could say there's no such thing as bad PR. I really don't see how this ends up being anything but a huge win for Musk (assuming the rocket doesn't explode, of course).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
$100k is like nothing compared to $90m. Since it's a test flight, they sure wouldn't want to carry a $90m payload as well. In these dimensions it really doesn't change anything whether your payload is a $100k car or a $100 block of steel. Except for the PR
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
For reference, this will let you know where the missions landed. Viking 1 is close to the equator and 2 is about half way to the pole.
Actual temperature measurements at the Viking landers' site range from 17.2 C (256.0 K; 1.0 F) to 107 C (166 K; 161 F).
This of course ignores the lack of atmosphere, water and being bombarded by radiation. Other than that - "nice".
So is it time to change Russel's teapot to Musk's roadster?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's not a concept car, it's the original Tesla roadster, the first car Tesla ever made.
I remember some kind of rocket powered car cruising through space in the movie Heavy Metal ...
Agreed. At least the clown beats the murderous felon - barely.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
That's not how technology works. You don't just "invent" something and then it's free everywhere in the universe. The ISS already has water and waste recycling but it is designed to work in LEO not 1G. So already the design is flawed. Then you have to look at cost. If it's $50k per kg for water cargo but $5k per kg for recycling then the recycler is a bargain. But if you try to sell water recycling to people in Mississippi for $5,000/kg your technology will be worthless.
The space industry has already solved quite a few problems with zero earth based applications because the hard technological problem isn't inventing the technology, it's making it cost effective.
Elon Musk admits he made up the story about launching a roadster to mars.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...
to launch junk in to space. God knows there is enough of it already up there.
I agree with those who say launch something useful.
So a tesla weights 1.4 tons, how about launching 1.4 tons of Ox, some type of fuel, Structural items, etc.
I have another suggestion. Putting a roadster into orbit on any planet is going to fill up the orbit path with debris. It would be a much better idea to just crater it into mars.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Falcon 9 payload to Mars is 4020kg.
Tesla Model S P100D is 2250kg.
Roadster 2020 will be a bit heavier but not twice as much. Falcon 9 has enough power to send the Roadster to Mars, Musk could choose some better demonstration of Falcon Heavy, such as sending a fleet of 5 Teslas.
Objects sent to Mars need to be COMPLETELY sterilized to avoid the chance of contaminating Mars with earth bacteria and possibly hiding any signs of independent development of life. I hope he doesn't actually do this stunt.
In any case, even with a high chance of failure, payload to mars could be used for scientific or engineering experiments. Maybe an experimental atmosphere -> fuel processor, or maybe even a hail Mary at a sample return mission.
We already have a huge amount of space junk around our own planet. Do we really want to turn Mars into a publicity stunt laden dumping ground? There's got to be a law against this somewhere...
Space belongs to the people who are interested in exploring it. Nobody else gets to make laws there.
I would send tanks of water. Harmless in a liftoff accident, very useful at Mars.
Too much partisanship for enough folks to approve of that idea. What I think is more likely is, Tesla will soon be offering a line of rocket-powered cars....
More directly, I see a house just across from me getting its electricity from space.
Nuts to Tesla, lets be clear that the first production car in space is going to be, for all intents and purposes, a Lotus. Even better, a Lotus modified such that it is even simpler (if heavier) and would actually be able to drive on Mars. Crap, I want to go to Mars with an electric Lotus Seven and a space suit. This is really setting off the fantasies. Can we put Audrey Hepburn in the passenger seat?
How is it far from straightforward? The goal is quite concrete. Failure is obvious. By "straightforward" I do not mean "easy", I mean easy to understand.
Far more straightforward than utopia on Earth, whatever that means.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
See? You couldn't address my points so you moved on. We can get to Apollo later, but first let's settle why you can see Logan's lights.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
... if you like my ride!
(Falcon 9 bumpersticker)
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
I just want to see him drive it down from orbit, like in the opening of Heavy Metal.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Heavy metal! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWMPe3wF9jQ
In that case, I have no idea what you are getting at. One is a flat map with distorted continent sizes, and the other is a slightly off-axis photo of the Earth. Why would they line up? Why do you expect to see South America? You can't see Europe, either, because you are looking at the bottom of the globe. If you download Celestia and plug in this string you'll see the expected view of the globe at that date and time from the moon:
cel://SyncOrbit/Sol:Earth/1972-12-07T10:49:55.18330?x=pf5CSSrstQ&y=ZklCNQh3hf///////////w&z=tyNCJ56wkv///////////w&ow=0.409521&ox=-0.191827&oy=-0.851893&oz=0.264146&select=Sol:Earth&fov=44.2006&ts=1<d=0&p=1&rf=3954455&lm=0&tsrc=0&ver=3">Open with Celestia
Rotate the globe to see that it matches your flat map almost exactly.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Elon Musk told us he was sending a car to space, then said he totally made it up
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The size of N. America is because the image is a composite of images stitched together to form a near-sided perspective projection. No one is even claiming this is a "snapshot" from space. North America is large because the image is purposely distorted.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Well written. Simple query to follow: If space is fake, then what's out there?
Yes, in the old days the ballast was sand or water; a cherry red Tesla just seems cooler. I for one welcome our cherry red Tesla overlords.
We aren't going to be able to live on Mars, ever.
Maybe so, but if we do at least we'll have a nice car to drive around. Maybe he'll send up a fancy boat on the next launch.
And to garner more interest, have a car naming contest... Seriously, we all know that at some level, it is a stunt, of sorts. It doesn't follow that the effort couldn't be inspirational to many others in the future.
http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/small-bodies/the-path-of-omuamua.html
Omuamua has such an unusual shape (approximately 10x as long as it is wide), that many astronomers have joked that it could be a rocket. It is the only "asteroid" ever discovered which is so much longer than wide.
It would be extremely interesting to send a probe to take a closer look at Omuamua, just in case...
Extremely difficult though. Impossible when you consider what be needed to do it.
It is already receding from us, and has a solar velocity excess greater than any human-made object. We would have to boost a probe to 2.6 times more kinetic energy per kg than any payload ever launched on rockets just to match its speed, much less catch up to it. The fastest probe ever launched was New Horizons which required a three stage launch system. An exotic electromagnetic propulsion system would be required to get the velocity and it would need to be ready to go now.
Even an extraordinary crash program would probably never be able to reach it since we would likely never be able to find it again once we caught up to it many years from now.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
And to garner more interest, have a car naming contest...
I think they would prefer the rocket explodes on launch over sending "Cary McCarface" to orbit Mars.
Not even to mention the top speed.
And the acceleration numbers! This is so far beyond ludicrous mode, there is no word for it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It's far from straightforward. Besides, even in the remotest fantasy that they could survive there, people will fuck it all up just the same.
Sure they will... but the point is we will learn a lot along the way.
What we learn from trying to do things is more valuable than just doing them.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Perhaps it's going to be sitting in orbit, so that when a facility is established on Mars, the administrator will have a really nice car, and will only need to develop a way to deorbit it?
As a Swede I support your idea and offer our parliament, paper, TV and radio main-stream media and if it was legal to say I also have a plan for even more!
When is this glorious event?
The idea and support for a round earth is much older than that.
In a million years when the aliens come, they find no sign of life in the solar system, but they find a car in orbit around the fourth planet, and say "da fuck"?
/ #FellsGoodBeingCommunist.
If this is totally successful and makes it into Mars orbit, it's position, velocity, and attitude will be known; you would have to do a whole lot of math and have perfect timing to have a collision with it on purpose, doing it by accidentally would be unbelievably improbable. Plus, any future launch that even comes within 100 km of it will have some form of attitude control and can adjust its own trajectory to not collide.
Rocket scientists aren't fucking idiots.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Never use GPS again if you are anti-space. Or watch live TV.
Both brought to you by satellites.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
No shit, why not launch a cheap supply, like a chunk of ice that at least could be do-orbited from Mars in the future.
Yeah, all the megawatt-hours of solar power generated by SolarCity, now Tesla Energy, are no good at all.
He may not be deserving of the hero worship he gets from some people, but give some credit - that division of Tesla is the largest provider of residential solar in the US.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
If he wants to send a silly payload, he should make an enormous inflatable Russel's Teapot in orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Big enough to be seen from a terrestrial telescope.
Yes, in the old days the ballast was sand or water; a cherry red Tesla just seems cooler.
It'll only be cooler if the flight succeeds. If it fails, Musk will wish he had sent a boring ballast tank, as that would at least have made it seem like he didn't take failure too lightly.
I actually wonder whether this payload choice indicates that Musk's confidence in the success of the maiden flight is higher than he is willing to admit.
Let's spitball it at $100 per kilo. That puts it roughly double first-class halfway-round-the-world airfare today. For comparison, the Space Shuttle was $18,000 per kilo. The Falcon 9, to LEO, is $3,000 per kilo.
>> Why the fuck would average joe want to fly to space?
Short List:
So if I want to build my own rocket, fill it with a jumble of algae, lichens, archaea, and bacteria and dump it onto the Mars surface, you would be good with that?
It's my rocket, right? You can't tell me what to do with my own rocket, right?
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
On December 2 at 1:34PM, Slashdot headlines read:
A Programing Error Blasted 19 Russian Satellites Back Towards Earth
These were rocket scientists. And, they were fucking idiots.
They are not alone. There are many examples of worse errors, committed all by "rocket scientists."
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize you don't know what you are talking about.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
On a purely selfish note, I'd prefer that Elon give the Roadster to ME. (He could have my beloved little Mitsu Eclipse in exchange if he insisted.)
Still, there's something fascinating about the thought of that little red Roadster, tucked neatly into a cargo container of some sort on the top of all that howling blazing power ... and "Space Oddity" blasting away in orbit. Although there'd be no one to hear it, presumably. And no air to carry the sound.
And the thought that, someday, someone will bring it back again. The ultimate "garage find" :-)
For bonus points he should attached a solar panel to the car to keep the batteries charged, put a camera in it and the ability to transmit signal.
As most people know, just about everything on the Tesla can be controlled remotely. Now I know the range to earth would be no good. However if they put it into orbit, and eventually years later, get another spacecraft there to relay commands.... They could potentially start the engine, turn on the radio (well play music anyway, reception might be a bit spotty on Mars), flash the lights, etc... Maybe with some careful use of the window washer fluid, alter the cars rotation or something. Anyway a secondary and even more hilarious PR stunt... Though I guess without air music wouldn't work, and without satellites the GPS wouldn't either. Anyway simply having it flash it's high-beams at the arriving spaceship would be kind of funny... For even extra credit, don't tell anyone you're going to do it and see the reaction!
It's all Intelligent Falling, according to the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
SA-5, the first Saturn 1 orbital flight, flew with a payload of about 11 metric tons of Florida sand. Even the Saturn V you cite used a Block 1 CSM, a version of the craft only intended for testing. And the lunar module itself was just a dummy. It is in fact very frequent to use dummy "satellites" that are no more than engineering hardware or even just mass simulators instead of actual hardware.
Hahahaha! You said "tidy up later" in reference to humans. Are you serious?
You complete, utter, and irredeemable imbecile. The main reason many humans are looking to Mars is the ultimate goal of getting humans off of the Earth. Why? Because of the attitude you just mentioned, you completely unobservant history repeater.
You even give the perfect example of what is wrong with humans as your closing statement:
If X delivers on its promise of Y we can tidy up after ourselves later.
If fracking delivers on its promise of dirt-cheap oil prices we can tidy up after ourselves later.
If exploiting millions of people delivers on its promise of creating obscene wealth for the a few of us we can tidy up after ourselves later.
If poisoning the atmosphere, soil, and earth of our home planet delivers on its promise of otherwise insupportable human population expansion we can tidy up after ourselves later.
History has shown, without a doubt, that humans don't clean up after themselves later. Not only that, but even the idea of "clean up later" is irrelevant. Humans make permanent changes to their environment that can never be fully eradicated or ameliorated. They do not take responsibility for things up front, and when they find out how impossibly difficult it is to try to fix them on the back end, they inevitably pass the buck again.
For example, would you drink water from an aquifer under a "remediated" superfund site? Of course not, because you know humans. They didn't make it like there were never PCB's in that place. They just sprinkled some topsoil over the problem. But when it is something you want, like cheap space travel to Mars, you are all well and good to make another waste dump that will never be cleaned up. You know it too. That's the worst part.
In short, your attitude is why I identify as a hermaphrodite wallaby. Humans are stupid creatures possessing inordinately developed linguistic ability and a concomitant rationalization function that allows them to think they are smart, all the while capriciously performing astoundingly moronic activities that are self destructive. Go fuck yourselves.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
With the utmost of respect my wallaby friend, your argument is based on the idea that we never clean up after ourselves, and we constantly get worse until the point where we will extinguish ourselves entirely.
Perhaps I'm short-sighted or naive, but I don't see that as the case. We feed more people on less land today than we ever have in our history, and our standard of living is better than it has ever been. More importantly, our rate of technical progress is faster than it has ever been.
No, we don't clean up our superfund sites to the way they were before mankind touched them. We can't. Despite that, we are working aggressively not to create new ones. Global production of both PCBs and CFCs is lower now than it has been in decades. Fracking is dramatically cleaner than coal. Water treatment is better than just dumping it into rivers. To my admittedly optimistic eye it does look like we are cleaning up.
There is one area where we aren't cleaning up though, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. That sore spot is global carbon dioxide production. For us to clean this up we need power generation methods that don't require us to dig up dinosaurs and no amount of energy conservation will solve this problem. Nearly a third of the world's population lives in medieval squalor, and they are polluting like crazy just to stay alive. The standard of living for those people will increase, or they will turn to violence and be completely justified in doing so.
So how do you clean this up? You need a power generation method with zero CO2 emissions, and you need it to scale to meet global demands. You need it to not require strip mining the worlds poorest places for rare earths. You need it not to produce long-lived radioactive wastes, and you need it to be dirt cheap, too. That technology is probably space based solar power, and to build it we need a bunch of bigass heavy lift rockets. To build those rockets we have to test smallass heavy lift rockets, and those rockets need a payload. If that payload is a shiny red Tesla from the guy that is going to dominate the renewable energy market in the next decade then I am absolutely fine with cleaning that particular mess up later.