r/spaceporn • u/feeling_impossible • Feb 07 '18
Surreal, absurd, outlandish, preposterous... But there it is. The entire earth clearly reflected off the side of a car. [1920x1080]
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u/Scotto_oz Feb 07 '18
What a time to be alive
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u/mr_droopy_butthole Feb 07 '18
Can you imagine how sick of David Bowie he is going to be by the time he gets where he is going?
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u/sheez Feb 07 '18
In space no one can hear David Bowie.
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Feb 07 '18
Indeed
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u/Old_World_Blues_ Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
Who is driving?
Edit: If it’s not Vin Diesel filming a Riddick and Fast&Furious crossover then I don’t care.
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u/Carrathel Feb 07 '18
Some say he can hold his breath for up to 1 billion years, and is the only man who can fly in a cherry red Tesla car powered by rockets.
The Stig!
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Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
A dummy named “starman”
Edit: I accidentally said spaceman first
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u/millllllls Feb 07 '18
You mean "Starman", which is why David Bowie is blasting on the radio for his trip to Mars. Such a good touch to this incredible feat.
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u/Kilowog2814 Feb 07 '18
Bear is driving (I'll take obscure references for $1000 Alex)
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u/naosuke Feb 07 '18
How can that be?
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u/FreeThinkingMan Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 08 '18
I didn't see the video of the actual deployment of the car into space posted so I am going to hijack your comment and leave it right here. It is just as awesome as you would think it is. Edit I updated the link from when u/Stainzz said the links didn't work https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=25m45s
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u/gliese946 Feb 07 '18
Does anyone know whether SpaceX has the ability to track the Tesla in space? How long will earth-based telescopes be able to track it? It's probably more reflective than your average space rock...
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u/Redexe Feb 07 '18
They know it's orbital parameters, so they should be able to predict where it is. But the Tesla is really small and dark, you probably won't be able to spot it, even with a decent telescope and in relative vicinity to Earth.
Edit: it's reflective, yes. But only in a narrow angle. So it's possible to see it rotating, getting dimmer and lighter periodically. But 4 meters is still really really small in interplanetary space...
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u/explorer_c37 Feb 07 '18
Add several more 'really's
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u/cbrookman Feb 07 '18
And space is big. Really big. You just won 't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.
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u/TheGreatZarquon Feb 07 '18
You might think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
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u/los_rascacielos Feb 07 '18
This site does a pretty good job of putting it into perspective. http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
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Feb 07 '18
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u/Redexe Feb 07 '18
There are several cameras in and around the Tesla , but the batteries only lasted 12 hours and there are no sattelite dishes, solar panels or other coms devices mounted to broadcast imagery. It's dead now :/
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u/BlahYourHamster Feb 07 '18
In retrospect this is a bit of a missed opportunity. You would have thought they'd put at least a solar powered tracker on it.
Heck, even a solar powered camera that takes periodic pictures every so often would have been good enough.
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Feb 07 '18 edited Jun 30 '20
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u/beowulfey Feb 07 '18
It was kind of a cost/benefit issue. With such a high probability of failure, they didn't feel it was worth it to equip the dummy load to take pictures of the trip. Most likely, unless it was perfectly facing the sun, it would just be taking pictures of a dark car lost in shadow anyway. Probably wouldn't be able to see anything!
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u/Tarkins_foul_stench Feb 07 '18
Because those "2 or 3 things" aren't things you can order from Amazon, they'd take years and millions of dollars to make. I won't even comment about the receptors for those signals.
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u/henryhendrixx Feb 07 '18
They can track it, the Tesla Roadster has roadside assistance and GPS navigation as standard!
/s
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u/franklybeingchildish Feb 07 '18
Very dumb person here, could you theoretically point a super-strong GPS satellite at it?
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Feb 07 '18
not dumb at all. in theory you could and that's basically what they do when they track the trajectory of, say, the voyager spacecraft. it's just not gps per se but rather radio wave triangulation (of which gps is a subset).
someone correct me, if I'm wrong
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u/ak22801 Feb 07 '18
I'm gonna build a rocket, fly up, take the tesla, bring it back to earth, and boom....got myself a free tesla.
Too easy, Elon you shmuck.
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u/jayhalk1 Feb 07 '18
Maybe if we want a space race, there should be a jackpot of 100 billion dollars or something shot at mars. Thé first person to Mars, gets the money!
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u/BetterOffLeftBehind Feb 07 '18
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u/serialthriller22 Feb 07 '18
Looks like Musk is a fan of Heavy Metal!
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u/beamoflaser Feb 07 '18
With those rockin tits who wouldn't be?
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u/NoMansLight Feb 07 '18
Oh Heavy Metal, the second movie from my childhood that gave me nightmares and that I also fapped to.
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u/AnalBlaster700XL Feb 07 '18
As an adult, I’m fapping to what previously gave me nightmares.
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u/mc_kitfox Feb 07 '18
Drive it on up and let's cruise a while
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u/youareadildomadam Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
Oh man... I just realized.... this is a space aged car commercial.
We are such suckers.
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u/nairebis Feb 07 '18
MOTHER OF GOD
I can't believe that didn't occur to me. This is not just surreal, absurd and outlandish... IT'S A FUCKING TESLA CAR COMMERCIAL. The level of sheer brilliance of this move makes my jaw drop in awe.
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u/ciggey Feb 07 '18
This whole thing is such a masterstroke of marketing it's mindblowing (I know it's also a genuinly amazing technical feat with real life consequenses, but that's not my forte). From the point of SpaceX it gives people who aren't that interested in space something to cling onto and antropomorphise. The actual visual is so cool and ridiculous it will be played not only on the news, but every morning and late night show in the world. They significantly amplified the hype.
From the point of Tesla they are now branded as the car of the new space age, the car of the future. That image will be iconic, and it creates a clear association between SpaceX and Tesla, above just having the same ceo. Like the reason Wolkswagen makes the Bugatti Veyron isn't because it's profitable, it's so they can point to it and say we're the company that can make a consumer car go +400km/h. Well Tesla can now point to Mars and say our car is somewhere in that direction. Creating that image of the car with the earth in the background isn't something that's too expensive for other companies, it's something that's literally impossible for any other car company to do. In many ways this whole thing encapsulates why Musk is where he is right now.
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u/Gravityislikeaids Feb 07 '18
I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around this. It's so absurd that it's brilliant.
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u/damnthesenames Feb 07 '18
Doesn't help it looks like fake cgi
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u/Gravityislikeaids Feb 07 '18
I know right! Like I know it isn't but it looks fake. I guess I've just never thought about actually seeing a car in space before.
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u/willem_the_foe Feb 07 '18
It doesn't help that the background looks like a fake backdrop.
In reality it's endless space. Which is incredibly unsettling.
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u/ThorVonHammerdong Feb 07 '18
Some flat earther read this and his eyes rolled so hard he did a fuckin backflip.
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Feb 07 '18
This is because we are not used to this.
Look up images of a desert on Google. Looks fake right? The sand looks too smooth, the patterns look too regular and the shading seems off. But it is real.
Imagine never having seen large bodies of water. When you're 18, you get to see the ocean. It is wild, it is harsh, it is colorful, it is vivid and it is nothing like the glasses of water you grew up with.
That is what space is like. I bet when space travel becomes more accesible for normal people, the feeling of 'fakeness' will fade away.
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u/nopnotrealy Feb 07 '18
Yeah, it's a shiny car without the mask of atmospheric distortion that makes it look fakey.
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u/MoonPro Feb 07 '18
World needs more this kind of silliness. Like Elon said, fun things are important.
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u/camlegacy Feb 07 '18
Wait that’s a real pic ?
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u/king_morbid Feb 07 '18
Yep.
The car is in space.
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u/MrDrProfessor299 Feb 07 '18
Ok I'm way out of the loop. They launched a car into space with what, a dummy in the passenger seat?
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u/Claeyt Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
Yes, Spacex launched Musk's personal Tesla roadster into space with a robotic mannequin in the front seat. It is currently on it's way towards Mars. It will pass pretty far from it and then go into an elliptical orbit between Mars and Earth. The roadster has David Bowie's 'Life on Mars' on continuous play on its stereo. The stamp 'Don't Panic' on its dashboard is of course from 'The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy' which it also has a copy of in the glove box alongside a towel which is also from the book.
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Feb 07 '18
There is also apparently a Hot Wheels Tesla car on the dashboard as well; at least that's what Elon mentioned.
"If you look on the dashboard, there's a tiny Roadster with a tiny space man," Musk said, referring to a small Hot Wheels version of the Roadster mounted on the dash. "It's kind of silly and fun but I think that silly and fun things are important... I think the imagery is something that's going to get people excited around the world. It's still trippin' me out. I'm trippin' balls here."
– Source
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u/gguerin84 Feb 07 '18
This may be a stupid question, but if there is no sound in space, would the song just be playing but no one could hear it? Sorry if I'm missing the obvious answer here :)
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u/Claeyt Feb 07 '18
Well, technically you're right, there would be no sound to hear but there would be vibrations from the speakers to the rest of the car.
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u/luger718 Feb 07 '18
Is this thing just floating in space on it's own?
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u/Ganjalf_of_Sweeden Feb 07 '18
I believe it is still strapped to the rocket that will take it into an elliptical solar orbit, but it will float in space after that :)
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u/FatesInMyShoes Feb 07 '18
And it says "made by humans on it" in case we are not alone out here. Which is a much better debate then arguing that the Earth is flat.
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u/mhmdwhatever Feb 07 '18
Yeah, we can't have some english-speaking aliens think it was sent by Vulcans or some shit.
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u/bubbleberry1 Feb 07 '18
Looks like a flat disk to me.
/s
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u/aparis1983 Feb 07 '18
Sadly, some people will actually believe that.
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u/oxct_ Feb 07 '18
You could personally take a flat earther to space and they would still claim it's a gubermint hoax.
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u/Ju1cY_0n3 Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
Yeah, after arguing with one of the "popular" ones a few months ago I just realized they have a few screws missing.
I tried to bring up magnets and earth's polarity and the dumbass said " the magnetic field is positive in the center and the edge is all negative."
And I think the guy that was with him on the stream said that magnets aren't real and that a compass is us misinterpreting a different force as a magnetic force.
I just can't even think. This guy came up with something that not only was testable with a fucking fridge magnet, but also that makes literally no sense.
Edit: Just went to a flat earth forum to read about how they would react to the new SpaceX launch, one of the mods posted a picture of the earth and the tesla roadster in response to someone who didn't know what happened, where the earth is shown almost completely, and the only continent visible is Africa right smack dab in the center. I giggled.
Edit2: am reading about how they think we stay on* the ground without floating away, top response was universal acceleration, so we are constantly getting* flung through space faster and faster. By their math we are traveling at a magnitude of light speed that is difficult to even write on paper.
Edit: repeated instead of giving the other guy's response.
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u/Gravee Feb 07 '18
magnets aren't real
I don't even know where to start with someone like that...
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Feb 07 '18 edited Jul 02 '23
gone to squables.io
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u/Textual_Aberration Feb 07 '18
If scientific knowledge was a modular language built on ever smaller pieces, flat earthers would be the ones who didn't learn the letters or their pronunciation but are intent on discovering the meanings of entire novels. They can't resolve their quest without stepping away from it to learn the basics, yet they refuse to step away until they're finished with the larger task.
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Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
I've seen a flat earther claim air doesn't exist because all the molecules would feel like sand on your face.
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u/GrafZeppelin127 Feb 07 '18
Wow. Woooow. Apparently someone’s never touched talcum powder, or anything else with grains so fine that they don’t feel like separate things.
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u/too_much_think Feb 07 '18
Middle school physics would be a good start.
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Feb 07 '18
Fact: If you take a real compass and put it side-by-side with a homemade compass in an experiment, they'll both point in the same direction. This is because the government controls all water molecules and every metal that's pointy enough to work as a compass needle.
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u/N0N-R0B0T Feb 07 '18
Did... did you try showing them a magnet?
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u/Ju1cY_0n3 Feb 07 '18
Nah dude it was a livestream so after he said that I left and drank myself to sleep.
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Feb 07 '18 edited Jun 03 '20
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u/AtlKolsch Feb 07 '18
CGI
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u/GrafZeppelin127 Feb 07 '18
I wish this wasn’t a joke, but it’s painfully accurate.
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u/AtlKolsch Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
Musk made a funny point in an interview last night. Paraphrasing: “You can tell it isn’t fake by how bad it looks. We have really good CGI now, if it were fake, it would look much better”
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u/aparis1983 Feb 07 '18
They’d probably say that they used CGI. Or that they had airplanes spray chemtrails to create clouds that would conceal the continents.... because an Illuminati NASA engineer ate toast with the likeness of Jesus burnt into it.
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u/vandeley_industries Feb 07 '18
I have a coworker I really like except his recent journey through his flat earth shit. He is convinced every single photo of the earth is Photoshopped. It is so aggrivating.
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u/aparis1983 Feb 07 '18
I hear you. My hobby is launching high altitude balloons. About 90% of the comments on the few videos that I’ve posted on my YouTube channel are flat earthers saying I’m either an idiot or a liar. I gave up on responses after realizing it was pointless.
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u/Rabid-Ginger Feb 07 '18
They have to be seeking you/your videos out or something, which just confuses me even more.
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u/mountaincyclops Feb 07 '18
Can you link the video? I would love to read through the comments for a few giggles.
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u/aparis1983 Feb 07 '18
Sure, look for the comments that have 10 to 50 replies or more. Those are the ones where the majority of the back and forth “discussions” occurred: https://youtu.be/tI6alFMD79I
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u/WHYWOULDYOUEVENARGUE Feb 07 '18
Just accept that some people are idiots and move on. You don't arrive at these conclusions through critical thinking. The anti-vaccination movement, truthers (etc.) are more reasonable, because at least they argue from ignorance and misinformation. These things are not tangible to them, unlike the fucking curvature of the earth which can be seen with your bare eyes whenever you fly or watch boats take off towards the horizon.
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u/Morvick Feb 07 '18
They would probably say all existing maps are fake, as they already do, and the land we call Russia or China is just somewhere else on this observed image.
The human ability to defend a held belief, despite evidence, is absurd and powerful.
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u/Calber4 Feb 07 '18
I like to believe they're all just internet trolls and are making one big joke.
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u/Heismanziel2 Feb 07 '18
What are the flickers of light seemingly floating away from the car on the live feed periodically? It's almost looks like embers.
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u/Pluto_and_Charon Feb 07 '18
They're flakes of ice and paint coming from the engine/spacecraft
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u/quaybored Feb 07 '18
Shit I hope they sent up one of those little bottles of touch-up paint!!!
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u/Kandoh Feb 07 '18
Dad what were the teen years like for the 2000s?
Well, we were all angry at each other. It became popular to talk about how badly you wanted to die. We got really into sharing funny pictures with each other. And while all that was going on some deranged millionaire launched his car into space.
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Feb 07 '18
Is there a window in the cargo bay?
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u/NotTimHeidecker Feb 07 '18
Nope - the car is just fully exposed.
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u/sprucenoose Feb 07 '18
It looks so pristine though. I thought being in the vacuum of space would have had some visible effect on it.
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u/Joe_Jeep Feb 07 '18
The only thing that will affect it is solar radiation.
You know, unless it hits something.
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u/Thebobinator Feb 07 '18
Not quite correct. Almost all the materials used for the car are currently outgassing. The various metals, plastics, and composites all have some amount of air or other gas trapped in them, and its escaping, greatly weakening the components.
I'd imagine everything is much more brittle and fragile than before the launch already.
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Feb 07 '18
I'm more impressed that starman still has his hand on the wheel after all the shit he went through.
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u/aerospce Feb 07 '18
Nope, eventually the radiation form the sun will bleach the paint and interior, but space does not really do much to most materials.
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u/0_0_0 Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
There is no cargo bay, there were some fairings (basically two halves of an eggshape-ish shell) which were jettisoned once out of the atmosphere.
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u/telekinetic_turd Feb 07 '18
The video footage was missed on the live stream, but they got it toward the end of the stream here: https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=41m25s
Footage is the interior shot when the halves blow.
tagging /u/HolySmokeyPants
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Feb 07 '18
Thanks I saw people talking about fairings but didn't know what that was. So the car and it's passenger are just on a journey all by themselves? That's f'n awesome!
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u/MezzanineAlt Feb 07 '18
let's see the pigeons try and shit on this now!
edit: I want that as a wrap for my car, or just have someone paint it on, whatever.
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u/Katayfaya Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
You can also see a smaller reflection of earth on Starman's helmet 😍! This is so inspiring, can't wait for the future! Edit: dude's name now correct, and capitalized! Happy now?😅
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u/anper29 Feb 07 '18
His name is Starman. He will never stop.
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u/Mdumb Feb 07 '18
I love how Starman drapes his elbow on the door... chilling, listen to Bowie.
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u/Heismanziel2 Feb 07 '18
I don't mean to depress you, but the future will never arrive. We will always be in the present, waiting for the future to come.
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u/Katayfaya Feb 07 '18
Haha thanks for the heads up mate! And no you do not depress me, I like the flow of time as is 😁
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u/Dethroned_De-loused Feb 07 '18
Today’s future is tomorrow’s present. Checkmate.
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u/Heismanziel2 Feb 07 '18
The past is history, the future is a mystery, and today is a gift. That's why they call it the present.
Double Checkmate.
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u/hYPE26 Feb 07 '18
If Aliens were to flyby this I think they might question our intelligence
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u/turtal46 Feb 07 '18
Naw, they'd think we were some badass, girlfriend stealing, sons-of-bitches.
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u/jugalator Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
Well I have to wonder. It has to be thought to somehow be past the initial space race to launch an advanced car just for fun besides testing the rocket boosters. If we were struggling, we'd be at the stage where we had to be far more careful about how to go about it and certainly not waste launch weight on a gimmick Tesla. Elon Musk can afford being playful because these are so cost efficient compared to what we have ever launched before on this scale and that is an achievement by itself. In the future this will be put into more scientific use.
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u/linecookjb Feb 07 '18
Wait so this is an actual photo?
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Feb 07 '18 edited Apr 24 '20
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u/FreeThinkingMan Feb 07 '18
Watching this in two times speed gave me goosebumps, this is exactly what that feature was built for.
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u/telekinetic_turd Feb 07 '18
It's a photo of the live stream from the car. Here's a recording of the live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfCgHDX917k
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u/Ligaguenu Feb 07 '18
I watched the live feed forever last night and screenshot every 10 seconds to get a good view of every angle. I can't believe how incredible this is. Makes me wanna cry.
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Feb 07 '18
This is what makes humanity great. Doing useless shit like this bc we can.
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u/Cattums Feb 07 '18
I've never been prouder of the human race then I am today. We launched a car into space because some guy thought it would probably be fun and it was worth it.
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Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 04 '21
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u/777-300ER Feb 07 '18
They didn't. Elon has said they just mounted it and sent it out there.
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u/kalpol Feb 07 '18
I don't think they did, the brake rotors and front suspension are missing at least, you can see just the mounting frame behind the wheel. I imagine they had to do some careful weight balancing or something.
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u/xobybr Feb 07 '18
Someone should slap the Tesla Motor logo in that empty corner with something like "our cars are out of this world" and use it as advertising
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u/MutatedSerum Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
This is probably one of the coolest things to happen this year. As a kid I heard about the Apollo missions and space shuttles. But I never thought I'd really ever get to see SpaceX amount to anything.
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Feb 07 '18
Can we watch this as it travels to mars?
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u/rebootyourbrainstem Feb 07 '18
Batteries will run out in a couple of hours, and it will be out of sight before too long. In addition, it's not really going to Mars, it's traveling around the sun at a distance that goes out as far as beyond Mars' orbit. So it probably won't be coming near Earth, Mars, or any of our space probes anytime soon. It'll basically be lost in the void until we get more powerful telescopes, more spacecraft, or both.
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u/Gartlas Feb 07 '18
Too small to actually watch. But predicting where it is is possible. Maybe Tesla will make a tracker or something
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Feb 07 '18
I would definitely have made sure my fingerprint was on that car!
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u/downeym01 Feb 07 '18
the names of all the employees are engraved on the carbon fiber payload adapter just below the car. does that count?
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u/Dipgrizzly25 Feb 07 '18
The Earth is now permanently 2,723 lbs lighter. Plus the astronaut.