Elon Musk reveals red Tesla Roadster bound for Mars

[Eugene]

Source: Florida Today via USA Today

Elon Musk reveals red Tesla Roadster bound for Mars

USA TODAY NETWORK James Dean, Florida Today Published 9:51 a.m. ET Dec. 27, 2017

MELBOURNE, Fla. — Can you feel it?

SpaceX has revealed pictures of a Tesla Roadster sports car mounted inside the nose cone that will launch atop the Falcon Heavy — the world’s new most powerful rocket — as soon as next month.

“Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks,” Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, said Friday on Instagram. “That seemed extremely boring. ... We decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel.”

Musk says the midnight cherry red Roadster (his own, according to previous posts) is bound for the Red Planet “on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit.”

Translation: The convertible will end up in an orbit around the sun that takes it “near Mars,” said Phil Plait, aka "The Bad Astronomer."

-snip-

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/12/27/spacex-red-tesla-roadster-bound-mars/983669001/

[Blues Heron]

1. what a weird man the muskmelon is

isn't there a scientific instrument that could be there instead? waste of a mission. lame.

[Henry Krinkle]

5. It's to test the rockets payload capability

Any launch of any scientific instrument would cost way more than the value of the car, plus
Musk himself has said there's a good chance the rocket could blow up.

http://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-falcon-heavy-cape-canaveral-hangar-pictures-2017-12

[Blues Heron]

6. what about a telescope

or a school project for science students? almost anything would be less offensive than sending a tesla into orbit. seriously, it's fairly grotesque.

[FSogol]

2. A high-tech potlach ceremony!

Wish he had donated the money to Feeding America instead.

[left-of-center2012]

3. Turning Mars into a junk yard?

[ProudLib72]

7. No, it will orbit the sun on a path that takes it close to Mars

So, littering our own solar system. For the next billion years parents will have to tell their kids "There goes the Tesla" as they peer through telescopes.

[Orsino]

4. "It's the car. Space chicks dig the car." n/t