SpaceX Has Received Permission From the US Government To Launch Elon Musk's Car Toward Mars (businessinsider.com) 225
SpaceX this week is preparing to launch Falcon Heavy, the biggest rocket in the company's history, for the first time. From a report: The 230-foot-tall three-booster launcher is scheduled to blast off Tuesday between 1:30 and 4:30 p.m. ET. SpaceX says Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket in the world. SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk, wanted this test launch to happen as early as 2013, though he recently said it could end in an explosion. Instead of putting a standard "mass simulator" or dummy payload atop Falcon Heavy, Musk -- who once launched a wheel of cheese into orbit -- will put his personal 2008 midnight-cherry-red Tesla Roadster on top of the monster rocket. In an Instagram post over the weekend, Musk also revealed that the car would carry a dummy driver, which Musk is calling "Starman," wearing a SpaceX space suit. "Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring," Musk said in an Instagram post in December, adding that the company "decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel." However, all rocket payloads need a permit from the Federal Aviation Administration to launch, and Musk's sleek electric car is no exception. The FAA granted SpaceX that permission on Friday in a staunchly formal notice, which Keith Cowing posted on NASA Watch.
"Toward", not "To" (Score:2)
Re:"Toward", not "To" (Score:5, Funny)
I'm waiting for the Star Trek follow-up movie about the return of T'la to the planet Earth in 300 years.
If Rodenberry wrote it... (Score:2)
It would be better than anything else this decade, with exception being the martian.
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I believe that this is destined (if successful) for a solar orbit which should last "forever".
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He would have to sterilize the car so well that there wouldn't be much left of it.
I think there is very little chance that a Tesla would survive entry into Mar's atmosphere in big enough pieces to be a risk. It's not like we've not arrived there carrying microbes already.. I'm sure we have.
Fastest Car in History. =D (Score:5, Funny)
Although this one will probably be adrift in space, I just realized that they could claim the title of the fastest car in history since it'll be zooming through space at speeds not possible on land. Too bad it won't be under it's own power.
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Will it go faster than the Apollo era moon buggy though?
Maybe they could claim fastest production car.
Variations on design (Score:2)
And given the design of the previous record holder [guinnessworldrecords.com] he is only slightly switching the design around replacing a pair of rockets strapped on a car with a car strapped on a triplet of rockets.
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It won't take too long until it also logs more miles than any other car.
I expect that the lunar landers have quite a few records. How many times around the earth have landers gone, and how far did they have to travel to get to the Moon in the first place?
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Not by much though. My car goes close to 1000 MPH and its an economy class. Hell, every 24 hours it travels the circumference of the earth. It should at least win the 24 hour LeMans endurance.
Not by much? Musk's car is going to be accelerated to approximately 25,000 mph. If things go well. If they don't, small pieces of it may reach even higher velocities.
Heavy Metal! (Score:3)
But not in a Corvette!
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I was thinking that they should get a mannequin, put it in a space suit, and stick it behind the wheel... [imgur.com]
By the way, for all of you kids, here's the reference. [youtube.com]
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They are putting a space suit in the drivers' seat.
https://youtu.be/Tk338VXcb24 [youtu.be]
Manson would be ok... (Score:2)
But I'd rather hear Taylor than Gaga, personally.
I see what you did there (Score:2)
"Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring."
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Musk already has a Boring Company... I think he is going for something else here.
That's the weight of a thousand Android pico probe (Score:2)
>. "Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks.
My understanding is that you can make a simple "pico satellite", or in this case "pico probe" from essentially an Android phone, for a couple hundred dollars on the low end. Launch costs, however, are in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Rather than carrying a concrete dummy load, or a car, why not carry a thousand hobbyist / university experiments? Sure it might not be successful - in which case I've
Missing (Score:2)
>> I'm probably missing something here?
Yes,
1) Not enough PR
2) Cost of added complexity and certification costs
3) Infrastructure and support costs (you need a big power supply, ground control infrastructure and manpower, communication at long distance, which require attitude control of the spacecraft, tracking, etcetcetc...)
4) Integration onto/into the spacecraft
5) radiation hardening: this is not your typical LEO cubesat. It goes through intense radiation.
6) Communication bandwidth to mars distances
Elon's rocket is smaller and weaker... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Elon's rocket is smaller and weaker... (Score:5, Informative)
But it is much, much cheaper than the Saturn V. It's also twice as powerful than anything else flying today.
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Okay so it was ridiculously expensive. But that only supports how ridiculously big and powerful the Saturn V was, it doesn't diminish it. Even though I understand all the economic reasons for retiring it, it always feel strange when we go "backwards". Like there used to be a supersonic passenger aircraft, now there's not. And when it came to rockets we didn't just take a small step backwards, like the Falcon Heavy is a huge leap forwards and we're still not back to the same lift capability they had 50 years
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Civilization (Score:2)
>> it always feel strange when we go "backwards".
That's normal, don't worry.
Civilizations all rise and fall, so id the actual western civilization
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Take it all up in one go on a massive rocket, or take it up in parts on multiple smaller and cheaper rockets.
The massive rocket means you don't have to do in-orbit rendezvous and assembly. Multiple smaller rockets means a single failure is less costly, and with SpaceX they can potentially be re-used to reduce costs even further... But your astronauts better like IKEA furniture.
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At least Elon's little red rocket works, while Saturn V's ancient corroded fuel lines prevent it from ever going up again. Unless perhaps NASA procures some solid blue fuel for it.
Donald, do that let you post this late? (Score:2)
We really need to hear about flacid rockets from the man with Gypsy Hands,lol
Boring (Score:2)
"That seemed extremely boring" - Says the guy who literally founded and runs The Boring Company.
Fastest Tesla ever! (Score:2)
No other car company has rockets.
Falcon Heavy vs Saturn V (Score:5, Informative)
I was curios at how Musk's rocket stacked up to the rocket that sent us to the moon. From New Atlas [newatlas.com]:
the two-stage Falcon Heavy has nine Merlin 1D main engines in each of its first stage elements burning supercooled liquid oxygen and kerosene to produce 5,548,500 lb of thrust. Then the second stage takes over with its single Merlin 1D engine to punch 210,000 lb of thrust
That's remarkable when compared to the Atlas and Ariane rockets of today, but now let's look at the Saturn V. Its S-IC first stage has five Rocketdyne F1 engines that, when set loose, generate a staggering 7,610,000 lb of thrust as it burns kerosene and liquid oxygen.
Then comes the S-II second stage with its five Rocketdyne J-2 putting out 1,155,800 lb of thrust from a mix of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. But where Falcon Heavy has already used up its stages, the Saturn still has its S-IVB third stage and its single J-2 engine that can manage a respectable 225,000 lb of thrust.
Lots of other interesting information in the article such as size of payload and cost.
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Yeah. The single payload is ~1/2 that of a Saturn V, but we can launch 11-12 of 'em for the same cost.
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Heck they had to reverse engineer the blueprints for the F1 engine, or maybe that was just the compressor engine (not sure) from the one they had left sitting out side on exhibit.
Seems to me we could have made some improvements over the last what 45+ years at pretty reasonable prices.
Guess that is one of the problems with government, since it is not their
Re:Falcon Heavy vs Saturn V (Score:5, Interesting)
I still do not understand how NASA lost the blue prints for the Saturn V including the F1 engines. Since it used the same fuel as the Falcon engine.
It's a myth.
(This is) a claim John Lewis made in his 1996 book, Mining the Sky, that he went looking for the Saturn 5 blueprints a few years ago and concluded, incredibly, they had been "lost."
Paul Shawcross, from NASA's Office of Inspector General, came to the agency's defense in comments published on CCNet -- a scholarly electronic newsletter covering the threat of asteroids and comets. Shawcross said the Saturn 5 blueprints are held at the Marshall Space Flight Center on microfilm.
"The Federal Archives in East Point, Georgia, also has 2,900 cubic feet of Saturn documents," he said. "Rocketdyne has in its archives dozens of volumes from its Knowledge Retention Program. This effort was initiated in the late '60s to document every facet of F 1 and J 2 engine production to assist in any future restart."
Shawcross cautioned that rebuilding a Saturn 5 would require more than good blueprints.
"The problem in recreating the Saturn 5 is not finding the drawings, it is finding vendors who can supply mid-1960's vintage hardware," he wrote, "and the fact that the launch pads and vehicle assembly buildings have been converted to space shuttle use, so you have no place to launch from.
And the final reason it won't be rebuilt even if you disregard all that and cost is that it would never get a man-rating today. It'd be like trying to get a T-Ford approved by modern safety standards, it would fail spectacularly. It was good enough 100 years ago, the Saturn V was good enough 50 years ago, but it wouldn't fly today. And I don't think anyone is ready to grandfather it in...
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The other big problem is that the Saturn V was designed in English measurement units. These days most serious engineering is done in metric. So even updating the design with some newer parts, or basing a new rocket on it, would require a lot of work just to deal with the units and converting paper designs to digital.
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They didn't lose the blueprints, they have them archived. The problem is that they're on huge poorly-organized piles of microfilm and paper, not in modern CAD files, they specify parts and materials that haven't been produced in half a century, obsolete manufacturing processes that nobody left knows the details of, using manufacturing equipment that was scrapped or repurposed decades ago, and of the people who knew the thousands of little unspecified details about how to go from blueprint to working product
Re: Falcon Heavy vs Saturn V (Score:3)
Are you aware that the mighty F-1 engine is being revised, with the F-1B being developed as a possible booster engine for the SLS, right?
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But I stand corrected about the other F1 items;)
Just my 2 cents
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I know my knowledge is mostly from articles I’ve read. If there’s a documentary I’d like to be to see it.
The biggest impression that stuck out to me was that the original F1 had several sections where it had the parts that *could* be manufactured by machine. And then they were welded together, and the “weld” was probably as big as the part. I think the best word to describe the engineers reaction when they examined one of the welds on an unfired F1’s was “awe”
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The Saturn V is not manufacturable today, and it's not due to "missing blueprints", it's just hopelessly obsolete.
This, but another reason that I heard that we couldn't manufacture a Saturn V any more is because the originals where built by hand. Since most of the original craftsmen that work on the Saturn V have passed on those skillsets died with them.
I'm sure that given enough time and money we could reinvent the skills required, but that time and money could be better used to come up with better systems.
shake and vib ? (Score:2)
The pictures show a car mounted in rather emtpy space.
https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]
I was under impression that a rocket launch is a lot of shake, vibration and gforces. How is a car like that going to survive it and more importantly, would it break apart and cause damage to the launch vehicule? Not to mention the batteries (likely they will discharge them?)
What can go wrong with this idea?
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I was under impression that a rocket launch is a lot of shake, vibration and gforces. How is a car like that going to survive it and more importantly, would it break apart and cause damage to the launch vehicule?
You should look more closely at the photo. There's a cone-shaped thing underneath the car. The car is bolted to it. It's not going to move with respect to the rocket until that cone-shaped thing lets it go after it leaves geosynchronous orbit (when the Air Force test criteria are satisfied).
Not to mention the batteries (likely they will discharge them?)
Nobody has said, but I'm assuming the batteries have been removed entirely. Perhaps not though. If not, they will certainly discharge, which is irrelevant. They may also outgas, which might be relevant. If they do
Why permission from the US gvernment? (Score:2)
I mean they don't own the rights to space... Is it because it's being launched through US airspace?
Heavy Metal (Score:2)
This makes me think of the beginning of the movie Heavy Metal.
Pleeeezze! (Score:2)
I know what will happen.... (Score:2)
Why not launch something userful? (Score:2)
So launching a car is fun and all but why not use the launch for some sort of useful scientific instrument instead? Something that might not otherwise get into orbit and do it gratis. Doesn't have to be anything sophisticated or expensive. Sure it might blow up and whoever built the instrument will need to understand that going in but then we aren't wasting a launch on something that even Elon will admit is ridiculous. Is there nothing that weighs a ton that could do something useful if it makes it into
Would be a great Geico joint campaign. (Score:2)
Re:at what price ur dignity slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Elon Musk is a very popular figure on sites like reddit that "like" technology and science but have very little understanding of it. Every week he says something that either shows what a "down to earth" guy he is, some doomsday prophecy, or announces some pipe dream technology that will never be worked on, and the masses start reposting his every word.
He (or rather his PR team) is very good at creating that "image" and keeping himself popular on reddit, but he's terrible at the thing an enterpreneur is supposed to excel at - generating profits.
He's popularizing science and technology. That's a good thing right? Even if you think yourself superior to him technologically, don't you appreciate that he is making science and tech "cool" to the mainstream?
Re:at what price ur dignity slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
>>> he's terrible at the thing an enterpreneur is supposed to excel at - generating profits.
Let's see. Typing 'Entrepreneur' into Google, I get a definition: "a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so."
Well, that pretty much sums up Elon Musk.
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Yes, because he lost so much money on PayPal.
Re:I've got Karma to burn (Score:4, Insightful)
So I'm gonna bitch about the super rich. There's no shortage of useful things to send up on a rocket, but we're gonna waste a launch on a dumb stunt by a rich guy. I'm an American, so I don't even have guaranteed health care let alone a robust social safety net, so maybe I'd be a little less bitter if I did. But this sort of nonsense reminds me of the pyramids, the opera houses and other excesses of the ultra wealthy. It's not a good sign to see stuff like this starting to make a comeback.
The dumb stunt is intended to do exactly what it is doing. Make news.
If journalists didn't report that he was sending a car up there, he'd probably send a lump of rock up there instead as a payload test weight. Making news = bringing in more sponsorship money. Yeah, probably more useful things to launch, but the more money that comes in the more he develops the rockets.
Re:I've got Karma to burn (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not seeing a problem here.
The only problem I have with it is I would love to have that car. I mean, hell, launch an old broken-down chevy but not something nice like that...
Granted, Elon'll get one of the new roadsters [tesla.com] when they come out...
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I think Musk's shiny Tesla is far better than a broken down Chevy because somebody, to make their own space statement, might launch a mission to get the Tesla back.
That would even be a nice KSP challenge. They're probably waiting for the actual ephemerids to be published to play them in RSS.
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Most companies and governments send slabs of concrete or steel plates.
(darkly) ... or dogs.
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Could he spin it out to kids to 'launch' something they've made? Even if it's just going up to come crashing/burning back down again, I'd probably have loved to have sent one of my toys, or a bit of electronics up in a rocket.
I agree, no one's going to put a multi-million bitcoin satellite or something on there, but it could be filled with stuff we know we're going to lose. Hell, he could fill it up with plastic dredged from the ocean ;-)
Re:I've got Karma to burn (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no shortage of useful things to send up on a rocket, but we're gonna waste a launch on a dumb stunt by a rich guy.
The important thing to remember about test launches is that they are test launches, and as the summary points out, are more likely to end up in explosions. "Useful things" have inherent value, and they cost someone money to put together. An explosion would therefore cost someone something of real value.
Elon Musk's car, however, has only sentimental value, and mostly (if not completely) to him. Blow it up for a publicity stunt? Roger that. Blow up a satellite that cost someone a million dollars and 12 months of work to put together? Well, let's not.
What I like about the terminology is "mass simulator". You put a "mass simulator" into a test rocket because it has mass. Exactly what mass is it simulating? If it is only simulating mass, then is it real?
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So the Tesla will have full self-driving capabilities, then?
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It's not the inherent value that you have to worry about in a rocket failure, it's the marginal cost.
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What I like about the terminology is "mass simulator". You put a "mass simulator" into a test rocket because it has mass. Exactly what mass is it simulating? If it is only simulating mass, then is it real?
I imagine a good mass [wikipedia.org] simulator would require good church, priest and congregation simulators as well.
his rocket, let him have some fun (Score:3)
Payload Dummy second stage (S-4), weighing 25,000 pounds, ballasted with 90,000 pounds, 11,000 gallons of water
Dummy third stage (S-5), weighing 3,000 pounds, ballasted with 100,000 pounds, 12,000 gallons of water
Re:I've got Karma to burn (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't "wasting a launch", they are testing a rocket. You don't send up a useful payload in a test launch, because it might fail, and useful payloads cost orders of magnitudes more than a $50K used car. Not only that, useful payloads have specific launch requirements, not just "up" or whatever gets you the best launch test data.
i.e. this is just a very minor publicity stunt, there are more important things to get angry about.
Design a cheap device (Score:2)
They aren't "wasting a launch", they are testing a rocket.
Those are orthogonal concepts. You can both waste a launch and test a rocket in the same launch. And that is what they are doing here. So what if the chance of it going BOOM is higher than you want for a pricey satellite? Launch something cheap that you don't care so much if you lose it.
You don't send up a useful payload in a test launch, because it might fail, and useful payloads cost orders of magnitudes more than a $50K used car.
So design a useful payload that costs less than $50K. That shouldn't be a hard problem for a scientist worthy of their PhD. Are you seriously arguing that anything we could design for under the cost of a Tesla car that
Re:I've got Karma to burn (Score:4, Insightful)
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First: This is a test launch. The alternative would have been a block of steel or concrete.
Second: Where's the "super rich" angle coming from here? SpaceX is a business, just like building roads and cars and railroads is a business. The next FH launch is already signed, will have a paying customer and will launch a GSO comsat, just like the F9 launches things for money and is cheaper than others.
This money is not coming from nothing and if this launch wouldn't happen you wouldn't have a single penny more th
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The payload can be cheap (Score:2)
Testing a launch vehicle that is supposed to launch billion dollar payloads in the future before you put said billion dollar payloads on top of it is not "waste" or "a dumb stunt" or "nonsense", it's the reasonable thing to do.
Who said the payload has to cost a billion dollars? Launch something of equal or lesser value than the car with any amount of scientific utility and you have a net gain. I'm pretty sure we can design a payload that costs very little and still has more utility than dead weight.
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Sunk cost (Score:2)
You need something sufficiently heavy that someone would be willing to sacrifice.
Yes and? I'm pretty sure that's not a hard problem to solve. Just ask literally every professor on earth for their best proposal. Pretty sure someone can come up with something that would fit the mission parameters and be more useful than dead weight.
Or do you have any payload costing less than several millions (or alternatively are you willing to take the risk of losing more than several millions) and weighing at least two tonnes or so to in order to match the conditions for the planned FH missions? I'm pretty sure SpaceX would have been able to accommodate you if you paid for it.
Why would SpaceX need to charge for it? Especially given the risk of KABOOM? Right now it's just a cost to them to even put dead weight on it. You think that Elon's car was free? It's a sunk cost [wikipedia.org] so it costs SpaceX nothing to put something other than dea
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Useful things that you put on rockets typically are also things that you don't want to explode. The entire reason to put a "payload simulator" (in this case a car) in the first launch of a new rocket is to not spend huge amounts of money on research and development building something useful, and then have it blow up when the rocket doesn't work.
Nothing better than dead weight? (Score:2)
Useful things that you put on rockets typically are also things that you don't want to explode.
Only if you have an extremely narrow definition of useful. Are you seriously arguing that there is absolutely nothing we couldn't put in the payload bay with more utility than dead weight? Nothing? No simple experiment or device?
No I'm not buying that argument. It doesn't have to be a muilti-million dollar satellite to or probe to be useful.
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What useful thing do you believe can usefully be placed into a trans-Mars injection orbit? So usefully, in fact, that it'd be worth equipping the payload to actually make the Mars-orbit injection portion (this won't) and have it hang around for a couple decades until we get our butts in gear in send humans to Mars? But it can't be too useful -- like a satellite -- because it has good od
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A standard payload for a first launch is a block of concrete. The (cancelled) Ares-1's only launch had a concrete payload.
There is no communication or science satellite that's so "off the shelf" that it's reasonable to launch it & shrug when it is blown to hell. We don't have them just laying around waiting to be launched.
For some perspective:
- GPS satellites cost more than double what the Falcon Heavy does
- Weather satellites are about triple the cost of a Falcon Heavy
No insurance company is going to u
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Re: I've got Karma to burn (Score:2)
If I had one wish...
Why launch dead weight? (Score:2)
There is no communication or science satellite that's so "off the shelf" that it's reasonable to launch it & shrug when it is blown to hell. We don't have them just laying around waiting to be launched.
That doesn't mean we couldn't design something that is cheap and useful. I have a hard time believing that there is absolutely nothing useful we could come up with to launch that is less useful than dead weight.
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If you want to send a socially useful test payload on the Falcon Heavy, I would send as many pharma executives as can be crammed into the payload bay. But if their mangled flesh actually does impact Mars, this would be a major instance of contamination. No matter how much we all would applaud such a demonstration of the public will, a car is the more responsible option.
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Nobody risks a satellite (which almost always is much more expensive than the rocket that launches it) on the very first launch of a new rocket. Well, at least not if the company that builds that rocket says that this is a test launch and has a good chance of not succeeding. Spending millions and millions of dollars on satellites just to see them go down in flames is not a wise move.
Launch a cheap scientific instrument (Score:2)
Nobody risks a satellite (which almost always is much more expensive than the rocket that launches it) on the very first launch of a new rocket.
So put some sort of cheap but heavy scientific instrument on board instead. I fail to see the utility in launching dead weight when we could do something useful instead. I'm sure some clever scientist could come up with an experiment that is cheap, useful, and we don't care if it blows up. The risk is understood so you design the payload accordingly.
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Healthcare is not a right, and I don't know why so many people feel it is. A right is something that you started with, and shouldn't be taken away. There is a right to breathe air. There is a right to free speech. There is a right to freedom from persecution based on religion, race, creed. These things, you would have if you lived on your own on an island. No one had to do or give anything for you to have them, they are inherent to the human condition.
Rights are not something that you didn't start out with,
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Yeah, if you want to be all hard-assed, scorched-earth libertarian about it. But, if you want to be human, you would look at health care as something we all need and something that is cruel to withhold from people. That doesn't mean abandon capitalism. But, it does mean, in my opinion, that the government has the purview to set up a system that ensures universal access to reasonable-priced and available medical care. We don't have to be savages.
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Martians respond; stop dumping your trash on us!
But if instead, they send a Lykan Hypersport [hearstapps.com], maybe they wouldn't be thinking of it as trash? Just a thought ;^)
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If the Tesla actually impacts Mars, gelsacs will be pierced.
Put me in it! (Score:2)
I'd go in a fucking heartbeat; even if there was a 90% chance it would blow up.
Fuck a roller-coaster, that's a Real Ride!
Godspeed, Starman!!
FINAL PROOF MUSK IS EVIL! (Score:2)
He's going to retrieve the Loc-Nar [wikipedia.org] from space.
I've finally got your number now, Musk!
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For a while his twitter avatar photo had him holding a white Persian kitten and sucking the tip of his little finger.
Re:With Musk in it? (Score:5, Funny)
The dummy is the autopilot. It will be vinyl and sport a smug grin. The real question is, how will they convince Julie Hagerty to go along as co-pilot to re-inflate it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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That joke is over done.... But the whole movie was over done..
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Once you've factored in the value of free PR that results, it's cheaper(*) than launching the traditional (and completely uninteresting) big-block-of-metal dummy payload.
(*) where cheaper == smaller net loss
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I agree completely. They should have launched a full size yellow school bus.
On a more serious note, there's no insurance company that's going to underwrite a satellite payload, including one from SpaceX.
The alternatives are the traditional block of concrete which has little publicity value ...or a space vehicle (say a Dragon 2 prototype) which costs many, many times what a Tesla does, and has a significant risk SpaceX won't get the data they need when the Dragon 2 is blown to hell.
So, yeah... less cost eff
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Just my 2 cents
Re:What kind of crock idea is this? (Score:5, Funny)
Launching a car in to space? Why? What the heck is this saying "Except" Elon Musk can be a complete "Idiot" at times.
I know! Why would we testing a rocket by using a car as a test mass when we could, instead, help all of humanity by launching some of our surplus double-quotes, which seem to turn up, like invasive mussels in the Great Lakes that don't belong there and make their users look foolish, everywhere.
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A heliocentric Earth-Mars transfer orbit, which happens to cross Mars's path... a couple months before Mars gets there.
Were they to launch in early May, the story would be quite different.
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Except that NASA's Office of Planetary Protection would never let them put the car anywhere near Mars. There are lots and lots of bacteria in that car. If it lands on Mars, it could seed Mars with Earth life, potentially wiping out Mars life, which would be a massive loss to science.
I expect (although I've never seen it discussed) that the target orbit will have some resonance that ensures it never gets near Mars.
Re: Mars, not... (Score:2)
There are lots and lots of bacteria in that car.
That plague ship sailed decades ago.
There were âoelots and lotsâ of bacteria on the Viking missions, Mars Pathfinder, Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, the Mars Polar lander, Phoenix lander, Beagle, and Curiosity.
They used a âoeclean roomâ to keep dust out of instrumentation, but they were never sterile.
The fact is we donâ(TM)t know how to sterilize a spacecraft without destroying itâ" a major factor in why we havenâ(TM)t seriously considered sending a probe to Europa.