Can anyone say what they will do during the first real launch? Where would they be trying to go to? How does a test like that work? I love space, I just have no idea how they actually would do a test of that magnitude.
I'm not even joking. That's the goal.
How do we know that the Elon Musk of 3000BC didn’t just build a big obelisk for the lulz?
Probably a bigger question of the problems of inferring great significance from extremely few samples...
“This one over here is what someone had for lunch. I think ‘twas chicken.”
That sort of thing.
I find it disappointing, however, that a worthy scientific payload isn't being launched. There was a late cancellation of a moon orbiter mission a few years back because of European Space Agency budget concerns (http://www.esa.int/Education/ESA_concludes_student_ESMO_Moon...). Could they not have adapted something for a Mars mission?
Seems a waste to send an automobile advertisement into orbit around Mars for eternity.
Especially since Red Bull will probably pay a lot of money to have a crash test dummy in a space suit strapped to a dirtbike with a Red Bull zip-tied into his hand, a GoPro on his helmet and some solar panels dangling somewhere broadcasting a live stream for the next handful of decades.
The coverage is not just an advertisement for SpaceX and Tesla, but for space in general. News has turned into sensationalistic drivel, driven by clicks than any sort of value. Little of what's seen on the news today will matter in 10 months, and you'd scarcely find a morsel that will matter in 10 years. This makes the absence of space coverage quite peculiar. 100 years, 100 centuries - the steps we are taking today, after a decades long haitus, into space will define the future we will all live in. If it takes being absurd to get peoples' attention in a world of clickbait, sensationalism, and drama - then, by all means, be absurd.
A big part of the reason it's difficult to get funding for space is because nobody cares. Oh look NASA's orbiter suggests our "recurring slope linaea", or RSL - an acronym more reminiscent of something a pharma ad suggested you may want to ask your doctor about than an unexplained phenomena that ought spark the imagination - may be water! How amazing is that! No, we have no real pictures and no.. we're not going to send the rover that direction.. and have no real plans to do so because of a 50 year old treaty. But think about it... in part because that's all anybody can do! Oh shit, another study just made a strong argument that the water is indeed just dust after all. Oh well. Maybe we just need another orbiter.
You're not sending an automobile into space, you're trying to capture and inspire the hearts and minds of the people. And not just the cliche nonsense of thinking of the children, but of all people. Because this experiment, if it succeeds, will probably have been the most interesting and exciting thing done in space in the past 40 years. Or we could beg for enough morsels to send another orbiter.
It would also be disappointing if a worthy scientific payload were to be blown up on launch, an event which Musk seems to think is quite likely.
I think if Musk had to wager he'd bet that this launch is not completely successful. It still makes sense to fly it though. You hope to learn enough to make the second or third attempt a success.
But still, couldn't there be SOMETHING more useful to mankind than a giant paperweight to send into orbit around Mars?
Mars would be a new thing. If this fails it will still be orbiting the sun, but as a distributed cluster this time.
Funny how this will probably be the best preserved Tesla Roadster in a couple of decades.
On the mars orbit thing - I think we have people who try to make sure that we don't contaminate Mars with Earth bacteria any more than we can avoid. You would think people would take a dim view of sticking a random car in Mars orbit, where it will probably decay and crash to the surface eventually.
Given Elon Musk's goal is explicitly to colonize Mars, this is probably the least of his worries.
As they have excessive load capacity for the second stage with this test mission, but no commecial cargo to transport, if Elons tweets are to believed, they plan to send his 2008 Tesla Roadster into a Mars orbit. Beyond winning any award for sillyness, if SpaceX manages to do that, it would be the first private mission to the Mars orbit, which would be another big feat.
Good god that's funny. I didn't realize the roadster was going anywhere, so it seemed stupid. But just imagine once people forget about this in 50 years. Perhaps we even have people on mars. But every few years someone post to the equivalent of HN a link to a wikipedia article about this car orbiting the sun... Or what if modern society suffers a setback (an actual nuclear war or something) and knowledge of this is forgotten and centuries hence, people redevelop technology and get images of it. Best joke ever.
If I recall correctly, a few years ago an astronomer detected something drifting pretty far away with weird visual characteristics. It turned out to be a big piece of metal discarded from one of the Apollo missions, painted white, still tumbling through space.