Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Monday, 29 January 2018

SpaceX are giving something back to the fans

For its debut flight, the Falcon Heavy is carrying Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into space. Musk has said the launch, if successful, will deliver the Roadster into a heliocentric orbit that will eventually send the midnight-cherry-red electric car by Mars.

I personally am looking forward to recreating this scene from Star Trek Voyager in real life.


"There's a lot that could go wrong there," Musk said last year. "I encourage people to come down to the Cape to see the first Falcon Heavy mission; it's guaranteed to be exciting."

There was an interesting period when the first stage landings weren't yet working in which the satellites were launched successfully and we still got to see a rocket explode. Maybe that phase will return with the early Falcon Heavies...
https://www.space.com/g00/39519-spacex-first-falcon-heavy-rocket-launch-date.html?i10c.encReferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8%3D&i10c.ua=1
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2 comments:

  1. Elie Thorne29 January 2018 at 18:58

    Please tell me they properly disinfected it. The last thing we need is to contaminate a potential alien biosphere with Earth microbes (or we'll never know if what we find was from Earth or was Mars native)

    ReplyDelete
  2. J. Steven York29 January 2018 at 21:15

    In actuality, though the roadster will be going beyond Mars orbit, it actually won't be going that close to the planet for precisely that reason. Plenty of orbital separation.

    ReplyDelete

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