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.
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."
What a great quote and what a great novel idea. I’m glad a private entity did this though. If the government did this it would’ve been lambasted and in the news for too long.
I will be watching these videos for awhile. Playbacks of the live feed from the Tesla, the 10 minute launch/landing and the Space X animated video where they animate what happened (minus losing the core).
The crowd reaction is one of the best parts of these videos. Just watching the celebration(s) helps me forget all of the toxic news we've been succumbed to as we watch history and space advancements being made. I'm looking forward to the next Falcon Heavy launch where all three rockets successfully land.
And on the tiny dashboard of that tiny car is an ant-sized car containing a flea-sized man, and onward down to the atomic level. Musk does not do half-measures.
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 :)
doesn't seem that hard really.
"Hey Elon wanna know what'd be cool, a production of Hamlet acted out live on the dark side of the moon."
Elon: "actually that does sound pretty cool, lets do it!"
"uhh Elon i was joking."
Elon:" What is a joke? I don't understand this concept."
That's surprising. I would think just a stereo off a full Tesla battery would last longer but maybe they're running the cameras off the Tesla's battery as well.
All the cameras were running off it and those batteries were not built for the cold of space so it's probably about right. They may have even been original from 2008 too.
I don't think that was a failure at all, they just decided to use up the rest of the fuel and see how far it could get. It surpassed expectations actually.
Second burn occurred not long after launch and was nominal. Third burn occurred several hours after launch and was more than nominal as they got better performance than expected.
Well that's actually a deeper question than you might think.
First answer: This was just a test rocket and they had to test cargo and a car is more fun to send up than cement.
This rocket is the largest rocket in history and is designed to carry up to 64 tons into space. It is meant to be the vehicle which is used to get men to Mars and material for a permanent science station on the moon. It is incredibly cheap (90 million versus around 1 billion for NASA rocket) compared to other rockets of similar output but it had to be tested. They didn't want to put anything expensive on it in case it blew up, so Elon Musk volunteered his first Tesla roadster as a test cargo. This test rocket was successful but there were some failures. The middle rocket didn't re-land correctly. The last burn put the car's orbit into the asteroid belt instead of just outside Mars's orbit. But overall it was a huge success.
Second answer: This is a massive publicity stunt for both Tesla and Spacex both of which are mostly owned and run by Elon Musk.
This has been massive publicity for all of Elon's major companies. Elon is the pre-eminent promoter of solar power, electric cars and space exploration on the planet and this event allowed him to highlight all 3 of them at once on an international stage. Genius marketing.
Third answer: This may have been the greatest sci-fi geek performance art piece in the history of the earth. It will be remembered forever.
What sci-fi addicted kid doesn't want to blow a car into space? Elon Musk was a huge sci-fi kid. He apparently read Asimov's foundation series by the age of 13 (Al Gore, Carl Sagan and Paul Krugman along with numerous other researchers and scientists have said they were also influenced by the series). Other sci-fi references in the launch include the 'Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy' (there's a copy of the book alongside a towel in the glove box plus the 'Don't Panic' quote), the move 'Heavy Metal's' orbital car scene and David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' song 'Life on Mars'. Elon clearly had a wish to show his geek side and NO ONE will up this amount of "Geek" for a long, long time. It was both utterly unique and full of familiar references to millions of sci-fi fans world wide.
Damn they nailed that, only dissapointment is no 2001 reference...although I don't know what they could've done besides add a HAL, which would've been ominous af
Damn they nailed that, only dissapointment is no 2001 reference...although I don't know what they could've done besides add a HAL, which would've been ominous af
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u/camlegacy Feb 07 '18
Wait that’s a real pic ?