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Comment by nafizh | Hacker News Reader

Anybody saw the 'Don't panic' thing on the Tesla? Made me chuckle, they sure have a sense of humor.

I absolutely love that Musk is putting a car into Mars orbit. Assuming mankind doesn't have an extinction event (or dark ages event), it is extremely likely we'll populate the solar system over the next millenia. In 200 years, Martian children can look up in the sky and know that one of the quickly moving visible satellites is a hilarious, old-Earth car. Depending on how accessible orbit is from planets over the next couple hundred years, it could very well be some sort of space station museum.

Or, imagine we hit a dark age and bounce back, and this event is lost to history. Five hundred years later we manage to get some people to Mars orbit and they find a fucking car in a capsule with a little mannequin stuffed into it flinging around the planet at hundreds of kph.

All while it's blasting David Bowie over their radios.

It would be cooler if it was going to be in Mars orbit, but it is just going into an elliptical solar orbit that will vary in distance from the sun between Earth orbit and and Mars orbit.

Hmm, they said heliocentric several times. But it’s a cool orbit no matter how you slice the the pork chop. Pretty sure this is intended to be similar to a “mars cycler” orbit. A “mars cycler” is an interplanetary space station which follows a sort of transfer orbit between earth and mars. This provides a cushy radiation shielded environment for interplanetary travelers and economizes on propulsion by leveraging gravity assist. IIRC some guy named Aldrin came up the gist of the design.

Part of me enjoys it, but a big part of hates that he put a car there. I don't associate cars with anything good, only bad.

Why? General opposition to motorized transport?

Opposition to non-bipedal forms of transport?

Or is it opposition to the type of urban planning that is centered around the car more than the pedestrian?

It's not going into Mars orbit. It's kind of weird that Musk never corrected that. Even his tweet from December said "mars orbit."

Well it's going into mars' orbit of the sun, and then immediately continuing on through...

Is it okay to put unnecessary stuff in the orbits around our or other planets? Isn't this space trash that can potentially be problematic for future endeavors? Are we creating problems for ourselves to satisfy our vanity?

Mars is really big relative to a car. You could probably put dozens or hundreds of cars in orbit around Mars without any added difficulty.

Anyway I wouldn't normally consider it to be space trash, but in this case it's pretty much just a big Tesla ad billboard orbiting the planet so I agree with you sentiment

Space debris is a huge problem. One car gets hit bit tiny debris at any point, and the number of debris flying around multiplies.

Not where it’s going.

Space debris is a problem in a small number of high-traffic Earth orbits. There is almost nothing in existence on this random Hohmann transfer solar orbit where the car will live for hundreds of millions of years.

Space is big.

It's going into a heliocentric orbit, and people will surely be tracking it.

If it gets to be a problem in the future, it will have so much historical value that someone will launch a mission to go fetch the Roadster and bring it home to Mars.

It's fun to imagine the technology SpaceX might come up with for that mission.

I'm wondering if they could make it work after retrieval.

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/24365/can-i-drive-...

the standard cargo for these missions is a chunk of cement. If you want to test a rocket you have to throw something up there.

It probably does not add a measurable amount of junk to hit than is already up there in the form of natural rocks.

Though if in the future human population hits the quadrillions and we are living on all 8 planets we should probably start worrying about our space trash.

It's not in orbit around Earth, and won't be visible from Earth. As soon as it boosts out of its parking orbit, it will be orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars.

Also, there is not any danger of stuff "crowding" out there because the amount of space between Earth and Mars is really quite extremely huge.

it's in orbit around the sun:

> Following launch, Falcon Heavy’s second stage will attempt to place the Roadster into a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun.

It'll become a touristic attraction.

Loved it. Absolutely amazing. https://i.imgur.com/KF87gOR.jpg

I posted more screen shots of launch: https://imgur.com/a/gh410

Saw the don't panic. Wondering if they packed a towel.

of course they did :-)

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/936782477502246912

Apparently they stuck in the glove compartment ‘a copy of Douglas Adams' book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," along with a towel’.

Source: http://m.dw.com/en/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-falcon-he...

As awesome as all that was, I can't help but feel sad that neither Douglas Adams nor David Bowie lived to see this.

Nor Asimov. They mentioned a copy of The Foundation series was on board.

Does anyone know how long a book (paper) would last in space?

Why wouldn't it last functionally forever? It's now in vacuum, and eventually will get to whatever temperature the sun can bake it to at that distance from the sun... I'm guessing it'll be there as long as the car is.

Radiation might be a concern. It could possibly embrittle the paper over time.

I'd guess that the temperature fluctuations and radiation would be pretty hard on paper. Zero humidity would probably make it brittle as well.

They did. It's in the glove box.

They did. The glove box has a copy of the 'The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy' plus a towel

Makes my day that much better. Giving approval to that kind of lightheartedness shows great confidence in the team's ability and makes overall morale palpable. Well done.

It's reference to the HHGTTG. Tesla has Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy installed.

Still don't understand this waste of ressources. Waste of ressources to build this Tesla Roadster. And then the waste to kick it into space. It is not that we are littering our earth itself. We now do it in space as well.

Considering the historic significance of Musk's mission, a little extravagance is entirely deserved.

ADVERTISING.

The amount of coverage both Tesla & SpaceX got from launching the Roadster equates to advertising costing considerably more than the cost of the car.

You’ve got to launch something. I’m sure you could launch an equally heavy concrete block to prove you can but... what’s the fun in that?

They could've launched a wheel of cheese.

I would support that.

Best advertising ever.

This is what Pirelli used to say about their calendar. It costs so much to get a front page ad in a newspaper, it's worth all the costs of the calendar.

Who cares though, it's just so fucking amazing that there exists a geek with enough cash and gumption to get a car flying through space with h2g2 in the glove box.

The Roadster was in use by Musk for years. They didn't build it for the occasion

That was the new Tesla that just was announced. I assume he hasn't been driving it for years.

You're mistaken; it's one of the original-style Tesla roadsters, not the newly announced model. You can see an image of the payload here [0], and of the new model here [1].

[0]: http://www.arabnews.com/sites/default/files/styles/ph3_660_4...

[1]: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/171117032715-tesla...

Your first link is inaccessible.

Ah fair enough, the colour confused me.

No, it wasn't. It's the old model.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BezcvpzAgYI/

That's the shiniest Tesla I ever saw.

Makes more sense.

That roadster was not cheap. This is no scrappage scheme going on here. The first roadster cost many tens of millions of pounds, maybe hundreds. Subsequent units were cheaper as they just used the tooling from the first ones, including this one. Compared to a satellite this roadster cost a fair bit in R+D, just not for picking up hitchhikers in space though...

But it's already served its purpose, would only be sitting in Musk's garage otherwise

It's a test flight. Can't put paying cargo on a test flight, so you might as well put something on there that's going to give you press.

Also, space is big once you leave low earth orbit. It's really hard to actually understand how big it is. Putting a roadster out there isn't exactly junking up the place.

> Also, space is big once you leave low earth orbit. It's really hard to actually understand how big it is.

In fact, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

Think of it as performance art.

Because if all you can think of is utility then all art should go as well. After all, it's all just a waste of resources. /s

Okay, in my opinion it's a waste of resources because if it is at all, it is very bad art. (It took no discernment or taste to do; it's an empty, ostentatious gesture. Precious little discernment or taste in the predictable Adams reference, too.) (Disclaimer: I like Douglas Adams.)

Part of art is that not everbody likes it.

There's plenty of art that I don't like, but appreciate it for what it is trying to do. That's absolutely fine. I'm saying this isn't even worthy of that sort of appreciation.

It is not a waste of resources. The car was built, it was used for its purpose. Now it is being sent out of the planet so you could argue that the overall amount of trash was reduced.

Also "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space"

step back a moment, friend. your sense of perspective is completely out of whack. maybe take a moment to consider that everyone else is not wrong about this.

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