SpaceX Announces Unusual Payload for Falcon Heavy Maiden Flight

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: Arnie123

Arnie, when those roadsters are all powered exclusively from solar, involving no grid attachment to a power plant which may be burning coal or other fossil products, that may well be true...

Of course, just finding the car would not allow a future space archeologist to understand the difference.

Fair point.

originally posted by: darepairman
a reply to: jeep3r

I wish I could afford to be that funny

The thing to understand here is that he's not trying to be funny. Being funny is an after-thought, kind of a bonus. Launching Falcon Heavy's purpose is to establish proof of concept and show that the rocket is viable. It must be done. The fallout from that will hopefully be more contracts to launch and increased revenue for SpaceX, not to mention the valuable insight and information SoaceX engineers will gain from the launch itself.

Think about how most companies must market and advertise. It's one of the more expensive things they have to do. Look at the price of network advertising, thousands of dollars a second. In direct mail marketing you're lucky to get 1/2 of 1% return, and that's just for leads--not actual sales. (I've done some of that and it's the pits.) Here Musk is setting up a marketing coup. Networks will carry the launch and millions will see it--all for free. i'm not expert enough to tell you how many millions this is worth--but it's millions and surely a lot more than if he did it low key.

* A Marketing Story: Ivar's Acres of Clams. Ivar Haglund opened a small drive-inn on Capitol Hill in Seattle years ago. He specialized in seafood. The restaurant did okay, but not great, so Ivar called up the Seattle Post Intelligencer and reported a sea monster had been sighted in Lake Washington, a 30 mile long lake just east of the City. The press ran with it and Ivar milked it for all he was worth. Before long everyone expected zany clam ads from Ivar...and he died rich.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: Arnie123

Of course, just finding the car would not allow a future space archeologist to understand the difference.

Not that we will be around to see it, but won't that be funny as hell. Future PhD dissertations will be written speculating how that Tesla achieved escape velocity with such a small battery.

Well, no sense in doubting his word.

If it doesn't blow up, then the Tesla car will be the first car in orbit of another world.

Though I could think of better uses for the first launch, I'm pretty sure the car isn't the only thing going.

Must be a joke..

I am sure there are laws that prevent us from polluting planets..
And what does he mean it will be in deep space for billions of years ?
Mars or deep space.. ? because if Mars I am sure we will get to it before a billion years, or do he know of a impending doom

He never said he would land the thing on Mars, so there goes the whole "polluting planets" thing. He said he would shoot it towards Mars, so presumably the thing stays up there--for billions of years, just like Voyager. As far as "impending doom" wha?????

originally posted by: Timely
a reply to: jeep3r

How falcon heavy is it ?

According to wiki,the Tesla Roadster weighs about 1,305 kg.

The capacity of the Falcon Heavy for payloads to Mars is indicated with 16,800 kg.

So there's room for more, I guess. At least weight-wise, perhaps not so much in terms of available space.

a reply to: schuyler

Exactly!

Convocations of alien species will converse and debate the topic for eons after we are nothing more than a distant memory!

In all seriousness though, I cannot see how it is that anyone can get behind Mr Musk on this particular aspect of the mission profile. If it goes right, then what we will have is an orbital monument to excess, not a legitimate scientific endeavour, around another planet.

We already have a thick mist of man made detritus in orbit of our own world, and I think its highly unwise to begin dirtying the Martian orbit with literally pointless guff, in this manner.

I am absolutely astonished that no one has posted this yet:

For the nth time.....the payload is NOT being sent to Mars. It is being sent to a distance roughly comparable to that of the solar ORBIT of Mars. Two very different things.

a reply to: Mogget

"Update 1/2: SpaceX has since clarified that the Falcon Heavy payload will be injected into an orbit around the sun that can extend as far from the sun as Mars, and as close to the sun as the Earth."

Link

Sounds like a standard Hohmann transfer orbit. If it does a close pass by Mars (which I don't think is planned), that could raise the perihelion away from the orbit of the Earth so that the Tesla's whole orbit would be closer to the orbit of Mars. If, before that happens, the car swings back around and encounters Earth at perihelion, this would raise the Tesla's aphelion to somewhere into the asteroid belt. It's perihelion would stay close to Earth's orbit, and another encounter could raise the aphelion even higher. This is how the Galileo probe got to Jupiter and the Cassini probe got to Saturn.