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Tesla Roadster Elon Musk Launched Into Space Has 6 Percent Chance of Hitting Earth In the Next Million Years (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk grabbed the world's attention last week after launching his Tesla Roadster into space. But his publicity stunt has a half-life way beyond even what he could imagine -- the Roadster should continue to orbit through the solar system, perhaps slightly battered by micrometeorites, for a few tens of millions of years. Now, a group of researchers specializing in orbital dynamics has analyzed the car's orbit for the next few million years. And although it's impossible to map it out precisely, there is a small chance that one day it could return and crash into Earth. But don't panic: That chance is just 6% over a million years, and it would likely burn up as it entered the atmosphere.
Hanno Rein of the University of Toronto in Canada and his colleagues regularly model the motions of planets and exoplanets. "We have all the software ready, and when we saw the launch last week we thought, 'Let's see what happens.' So we ran the [Tesla's] orbit forward for several million years," he says. The Falcon Heavy rocket from SpaceX propelled the car out toward Mars, but the sun's gravity will bring it swinging in again some months from now in an elliptical orbit, so it will repeatedly cross the orbits of Mars, Earth, and Venus until it sustains a fatal accident. The Roadster's first close encounter with Earth will be in 2091 -- the first of many in the millennia to come.
Hanno Rein of the University of Toronto in Canada and his colleagues regularly model the motions of planets and exoplanets. "We have all the software ready, and when we saw the launch last week we thought, 'Let's see what happens.' So we ran the [Tesla's] orbit forward for several million years," he says. The Falcon Heavy rocket from SpaceX propelled the car out toward Mars, but the sun's gravity will bring it swinging in again some months from now in an elliptical orbit, so it will repeatedly cross the orbits of Mars, Earth, and Venus until it sustains a fatal accident. The Roadster's first close encounter with Earth will be in 2091 -- the first of many in the millennia to come.
I'll chance it!
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
I hope he has collision
before 2091, as being space junk and a hazard to interplanetary spacecraft.
That's if Elon's dream of cheap spaceflight and interplanetary travels becomes reality.
I am fine with it.
I'm kind of surprised Musk didn't grandstand a bit and offer a large prize for reclaiming the Tesla intact, like $100 million or something?
It would obviously cost more than that with today's tech to actually pull it off, but it would be kind of amusing if in 20 years or something someone was actually able to cobble together a robotic mission to grab it and bring it back AND turn a profit on the whole thing.
This isn't orbiting the Earth. It's no more a problem than any chunk of rock orbiting our star.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
After that I'll be gone and won't care.
First, to test the rocket he had to fire something. Two, making as much of the rocket as possible reusable is cutting down on space junk. Lastly, there are numerous chucks of rock in the same type orbit, and they slam into the Earth all the time. We need to find ways to deal with them anyway.
I wonder if it'll be useful as a practice target to identify for collision warning systems.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Bullshit
There needed to be a test load. Instead of a lump of concrete he used an old car. No more dangerous, no CO2 emissions from making the concrete, much more interesting, and funny for those whose sense of humor is more evolved than bathroom jokes.
Maybe by then there'll be enough charge stations to use electric cars effectively.
Why do you go out and spend money on frivolous things like meals out and movies, risking the lives of other people (there's probably a 6% of you accidentally killing one once in a million years) when you could give every extra penny you have to charity instead?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"Space junk" is only a problem in Earth orbit, where it has a significant chance of colliding with other important objects. The smaller, scattered debris left behind by launches or collisions is the real problem, as it's harder to track. When the Chinese intentionally blew up one of their own satellites in an anti-satellite missile test around a decade ago, it caused a real uproar, because they intentionally created thousands of pieces of debris that would be a problem for many decades to come.
This solar-orbiting Roadster is not any sort of real problem worth complaining about, unless you just want to grump about something.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I plan to live forever.
Based on my, so far very successful, plan to live forever it is a near certainty that it will hit the earth within my life time. That Bastard is messing up my planet!
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
...whether there is, in fact, a dead hooker in the trunk.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
He's being celebrated because it's now Space junk, instead of Earth junk.
You try strapping several rockets all together and try to make it work out.
Just like Marvin, I expected an Earth-shatterimng Kaboom...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well first of all it was cool as hell. Second of all this was test of the big ass rocket they used. Normally they would use dead weight like lead or sand, but this time Musk just decided to use his car.
An yes, there are other reasons. Mainly it was a publicity stunt for Space X. An it was a good one. It has people focused on space travel again. Anything that does that in a positive manner is a good thing to me.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
I plan to live forever.
Or you'll die trying!
I was not a huge fan of Star Trek: Voyager - but, in my mind, one of the funnier scenes occurred when they ran across an old pickup in space.
#DeleteChrome
Orbits of solar system objects aren't predictable to anywhere near the accuracy required to make that statement meaningfully. Especially not relatively light-weight and complex-shaped things like cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
To be more exact, you can run a zillion simulations to come up with a probability, but all of the hit/miss scenarios are meaningless if they're too far in the future.
We have a way to deal with them. Send offshore oil drillers into space and break up the rock in dramatic fashion with explosives. Saw a documentary about it once.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
and it would likely burn up as it entered the atmosphere.
I'm no expert, but since asteroid usually need to be over 25 meter to reach ground (Look at Asteroid Fast Facts NASA on google), could be remove the "likely" out of the sentence?
Elok
You seem to forget that the money spent on meals, movies, toys, etc is actually going to the pay of hundreds or even thousands of people who are involved in providing those things for sale. Better that your money keeps them employed than just spending it all on charity. Don't stop supporting charity too though :)
Instead of a lump of concrete he used an old car. No more dangerous, no CO2 emissions from making the concrete...
Manufacturing a car is far more environmentally detrimental than making the same mass of concrete.
Otherwise I agree - his company, his money, his car. I found it clever.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Then the UK will have it's first decent roadster.
If you are worried about this car, why aren't you worried about Mariner 4? Or any other probe or rocket body that was sent on the same trajectory. They all may impact Earth some day.
We put up thousand of satellites and booster that fall back to Earth. Were was the question and research about that? No one even questions every time the DOD pops a spy satellite in orbit. They come down too. The Chinese have their first 'space station' about ready to deorbit and they have no idea where it is coming down.
A million years? We should be worrying about deorbiting junk now. Some lasers to destabilize orbital junk slowly, a few heating zaps which is also photon pressure, at a time would be a good idea; we did create the mess. But then burying our nuclear waste properly would be a good idea too. We seem lax on passing our problems down to the next generation. That is not standing up like adults in the room. More tanks but not cleaning up after.
Some pretty good photos and streams hit TV as news but were in fact free Tesla/SpaceX advertising.
Also, I guarantee he will be the de facto record holder for "Owner of the Highest Mileage Tesla"!
The one thing that saddens me is the AAA policy requiring you to be with the car if you request service...
No No No, if you see Ganymede you've gone too far!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
The car was already manufactured.
Ezekiel 23:20
...were in fact free Tesla/SpaceX advertising....
While you make a good point, my local news had a longish piece last night about Black Panther as if yet another superhero movie is something remarkable.
I plan to live forever.
That was my plan too. Once.
I've learned though that Mother Nature has a different plan. And fighting it is a losing proposition.
But I hope things work out for you.
TFA says the roadster will cross the orbits of Mars, Earth, and Venus. The last burn was in Earth orbit, so obviously it'll return there. The burn gave it an apohelion well beyond Mars orbit, so obviously it'll cross it (assuming it's in the ecliptic). Every diagram I've seen has the Roadster's orbit roughly tangent to Earth orbit, as would happen if the burn increased its orbital velocity.
Without major changes to its orbit, the Roadster will stay at Earth orbit or further from the Sun. If it were to make a course correction, it could establish an even more elliptical orbit and cross Venus orbit, but the delta-vee of a Tesla Roadster in a frictionless vacuum is very, very low.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
how is throwing junk in space worthy of admiration?
Free? Yeah launching that rocket sure came cheap...
Came from the advertising budget...
It always hits Moe's bar.
Call the lawyers!!!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
"you could give every extra penny you have to charity"
Underage hookers in Haiti!!! Woo-hoo!!!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Modeling cars in space may have more error than modeling chunks of rock. Shiny side anyone? Were the tires inflated and will there be extra thrust when they leak or get punctured.
I wonder if it will show up in Sky Map on Android at some point. That would be great!
Yup launch was just before releasing record losses for tesla...
love is just extroverted narcissism
Black Panther as if yet another superhero movie is something remarkable
People are making a big deal out of the Black Panther, some are saying it is the first black super hero. They are forgetting Blade with Wesley Snipes was back in 1998, 20 years ago.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
And he has sworn to never buy a car again.
But why throw away a perfectly good car ? Or was his Telsa broken and beyond repair ?
But why throw away a perfectly good car ? Or was his Telsa broken and beyond repair ?
Well, it was ten years old. He probably wanted an excuse to get a new one.
So far, we've discovered 15,000 rocks in orbits crossing close to Earth ("Near Earth Objects"), and the best estimate is that we've found about one quarter of the ones larger than 140 meters in diameter.
Wheelbase of a Tesla roadster is about four meters.
For every Tesla roadster in Earth-crossing orbit-- one--there are a million rocks that are at least that big.
There are a lot of asteroids. But, fortunately (quoting Douglas Adams), space is big. Really big.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I am 100% confident that the car will never hit the Earth, because I fully expect that within the next couple hundred years it will be retrieved and put on display in a museum somewhere. Maybe the Luna City museum or the Ceres Museum; some Earth museum is also possible.
Right now, retrieving it is theoretically possible but such a huge and expensive undertaking that it's totally unreasonable. But if we build out our infrastructure, we will have spacecraft flitting between Earth, Mars, and the asteroids and sending a tow truck to grab the Roadster will be no big deal.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Why is Musk being celebrated for launching purpose-built space junk? I remember when space junk was considered a problem.
Why not? Space is rather large and there's plenty of it to accommodate both junk and non junk without them coming within light years of each other.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Blade was more antihero than super hero; along with Hancock, and do we count DeadShot in Suicide Squad?
Plus I recently watched, Luke Cage on Netflix, but that wasn't a feature film.
I agree perhaps Black Panther isn't the first, but there aren't really a lot. And there HAVE been a pile of marvel and DC super hero movies made in the last decade - ive lost count -- between Thor, Captain America, Spiderman, Superman and Batman and their sequels its already at least a dozen or more, and that's before even looking at Green Lantern or Antman or other lesser known names, what percentage of them were black vs white? so I don't see why anyone would take issue with a bit of fanfare around this one being about a black hero. It doesn't happen all that often.
I'm trying to forget Suicide Squad but also totally forgot about Luke Cage.
I don't have any problem with fanfare, I just didn't want Blade swept under the rug. Blade was a nice breath of fresh air after sparkly vampires and romantic vampires.....
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
It was also a test of the spacesuit that the mannequin driver was in. That's a SpaceX design for the Mars mission.
They were launching the rocket anyway.
same thinking sportscentre4u
Space junk in low and geosynchronous Earth orbit is a problem, this is in solar orbit along with about a billion rocks of comparable mass. And the low cost/mass lift provided by rockets like the Heavy is going to be critical for tug operations to keep crowded Earth orbits clear. The Heavy launch has great implications for space debris, but as something to enable us to mitigate it, not as something that contributes to it.
Think of all the free advertising mileage he got/ is getting out of it.
It's probably a net savings, and the advertising is a lot less annoying.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
For that matter, the second stage itself is more massive than the Roadster. He could have replaced the Roadster with a block of ice that would sublime in orbit, and the debris hazard would be essentially unchanged. It'd just have complicated the launch and left us a bit poorer culturally speaking.
The name of the next ASDS is the perfect response to those innumerate, ignorant, arrogant jackasses who think there was something wrong with Musk launching his old car as a test payload.
We interrupt our regular programming to bring you this important breaking news. We have just learned that an unknown spacecraft is approaching Earth, origins and intentions unknown. Radar and satellite imaging reveal it to be massive in size. No direct contact has been possible so far. However, an emissary from the spaceship has teleported to the Missouri headquarters of Enterprise Rent-A-Car. This non-corporeal entity has occupied the body of an executive secretary who now speaks on behalf of the enigmatic stellar visitor. The entity is quoted as saying, “We seek the Musk unit. You will assist us. I have been programmed by St’man to observe functioning of the carbon-based units infesting the Enterprise. St’man travels here to find the Creator. You may not speak directly to St’man, but if the carbon based units insist on direct dialogue, you will be permitted to speak to copilot Don Panic.”
Is STARMAN in Good Hands? (LOL!)
If he's shooting the car into space, he must not be very happy with it! If even the CEO is dumping it as far away as possible I'll think twice before buying one!
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Opening scene
Who's the cat that won't cop out
when there's danger all about?
(Shaft)
Right on
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
What if there is an actual human being sitting in the seat of the car? Elon might be a criminal mastermind. He could have run over a person with his car, and then get all of the world to see him put the evidence of his crime on an orbit around mars.
And we all applauded him while he did it.
Genius!
I would read that book...
it's the asteroid that it knocks out of the asteroid belt into a collision course with Earth that's the problem.
I'm not sure why China got so much flak for for testing ASAT, when the US did the same thing a few years prior.
I'm not sure why China got so much flak for for testing ASAT, when the US did the same thing a few years prior.
I did a bit of looking into this.
Are you talking about the US Navy shootdown in 2008? Ostensibly, the US brought down their malfunctioning satellite in order to prevent it from becoming a hazard due to a large amount of toxic fuel on board. In that case, the satellite was already on its way down, and the destruction just made sure it would completely burn up in the atmosphere. According to reports at the time, all the debris was expected to re-enter the atmosphere within 40 days.
There was a much earlier test in 1985, but since then, we've had a self-imposed ban on doing so, for precisely the reason we are now seeing with the Chinese test. In China's case, the hundred thousand pieces of debris from their test a decade ago is still orbiting the planet, and will continue to orbit for several more decades at least. It was destroyed at an altitude of 537 miles, so the debris will last much longer than what was caused by the US test, which was destroyed at 350 miles. Orbital decay is not linear, which means that the US test's debris likely had a significantly shorter time-to-decay than the Chinese test.
So, no, the US record isn't exactly spotless here, but hopefully everyone's learned their lesson about this sort of thing.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I'm not sure why China got so much flak
Also, I see what you did there...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Should Musk be allowed to use his publically-funded private space program to promote his publically-funded private auto business though?
It will certainly hold the record for the longest drift.
Current civilisation crumbles and by the time the roadster crashes down to earth, civilisation has rebuilt itself to the point of 1940s technology.
...maybe this has happened before...
The car comes crashing down in a place coincidentally named Roswell, and top scientists harvest this strange extraterrestrial technology for the wonders of ICs, microcontrollers & Li-ion batteries.
Obviously the government don't want to cause panic that some alien craft crashed from space, so they subtly release technology based on this 'Tesla' civilisation's tech and take credit of these wonderful inventions themselves.
zero
i could live a little longer in this prison
"I wonder if it'll be useful as a practice target to identify for collision warning systems."
They should have added a solar panel on the hood, so that it can turn on the lights from time to time the next million years.
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/voy_the37s012.jpg
long before it even gets anywhere remotely close to Mars, let alone coming back to Earth.
Imagine if you would, the situation between Iran and Israel escalates to an unbelievable horror. The US is forced to intervene, but not without Russia intervening on behalf of Iran. Imagine a quick escalation between tactical nukes and country-wrecking megaton class weapons. The fallout and hellscape firestorms consumes nearly all of man and the information it has collected over the past thousands of years. Books, gone. Digital data, gone. Google, Facebook, and Amazon's datacenters, seen as a high value target by Russia, are directly targeted. Nothing remains. Most servers are taken offline permanently due to the effects of the thousands of EMPs. Those not destroyed by EMP have no power. Most of those with the knowledge and skill to rebuild the infrastructure are dead from either the blast, effects of fallout, or starvation. FEMA is overwhelmed, unable to distribute food to the targeted metro areas.
Hundreds or thousands of years pass, and humanity is rebuilding itself. Astrology is rediscovered and a few years later, a red car is seen passing over Earth with no explanation. The car comes crashing to Earth and the only thing that remains is a smoldering lithium battery, the frame, and a tiny red Tesla inside what used to be the glovebox.
I don't know where I was going with this... but welcome to my imagination.
> But why throw away a perfectly good car ?
Well, when you have a dead prostitute in the trunk, and a big rocket in need of a payload. What would you do?
The environmental cost aspect of it depends on the question of whether Musk was going to keep driving that car or if he already had plans to replace it before this stunt.
If a new car was built to replace this one for his personal use that would not have been built had Musk not launched his car vaguely toward Mars, then the construction cost of that car minus the relative efficiency benefits of the new design can be directly attributed to this launch.
My point being, as my point seems to always be when talking to people who think they know anything, reality is complicated.
Can we mount a parachute in it? It would be so nice to put my hands in it.
a la Dumb and Dumber
Why is Musk being celebrated for launching purpose-built space junk? I remember when space junk was considered a problem.
Should we ever manage to create a space junk problem in heliocentric orbits, it would be an amazing achievement.
...there's still part of me wishing they would have launched something semi-useful. Something like having a competition for building an ultra cheap satellite. I think it would be pretty inspiring to be part of a college team that built a satellite, then it could be tracked and used for lessons down the road. Maybe they would find unexpected readings. Or they could have launched something with an experimental energy source / materials, something for science, etc.
He is pre-positioning it in the space garage, and will pick it up on the way to Mars. This way he will have something to drive.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Ostensibly, the US brought down their malfunctioning satellite in order to prevent it from becoming a hazard due to a large amount of toxic fuel on board.
Yes, ostensibly is the word. The satellite tank, a very thin shell (like all space fuel tanks) contained 500 kg of hydrazine, could not have survived re-entry intact -- such a thing has never happened before with the many deorbiting launchers and satellites over the years. You cannot get a hydrazine tank from orbit to Earth's surface unprotected with its contents still on board. Indeed even given that the pipe connections to the tank would be broken, the hydrazine would quickly have outgassed even from an intact tank.
And the extraordinary expense on Operation Burned Frost relative to even the theoretical hazard of of 500 kg of hydrazine landing somewhere randomly on the Earth's surface was far out of proportion to how similar toxic hazards are normally handled.
There were two far more plausible reasons: it was an American military reconnaissance satellite and they wanted to make sure the classified technologies on it were destroyed, and they wanted to practice an orbital shoot down. Probably both of these were motivations, the "hydrazine threat" cover story was ludicrous.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
So now i'm waiting for Gravity 2 and we will probably see a tesla crash into a space station.....
Sparkly romantic vampires came out 10 years AFTER Blade. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV Series) - which features many more dangerous and evil vampires than romantic ones - only started one year before Blade.
In the far future, we'll be visited by "Tosa", and it will want to speak to its creator. And we'll need a bald chick to communicate.
Iâ(TM)d bet it will be sitting in some museum within a hundred years.
yeah, but no-one understands him!
But his woman of course
In 1000 years, when Elon Musk and this launch are tiny footnotes in obscure history books, there will be some inhabitants of the Asteroid Belt scratching their heads and going "WHAT THE FUCK?!" when they find that car.
So was the concrete.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The car was already manufactured.
Sure, but I bet he's going to replace it and the one is space won't end up on the secondary market.
Not that I think it was a bad idea, but this is a very deep rathole...
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates