Sorry for the stupid question (I wasn't following this event): so it's a _real_ car? inside an aircraft (which i imagine the inside is like military cargo ship as seen in movies)?
So launch providers typically send a block of concrete, or something similar, and call it a 'Mass Simulator', to prove that the launch vehicle can function with a load that heavy.
Elon Musk literally thought 'Hey, the Tesla Roadster I've been driving would be a cool thing to send into space as a mass simulator.' And so he did. With a mannequin inside a production Tesla spacesuit. Blaring David Bowie the whole way. Aiming roughly at Mars and burning until the propellant runs out.
Starman will be in heliocentric orbit indefinitely.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk's_Tesla_Roadster#Fut...
It would make for a good supervillain story, intentionally ramming the Earth with a gravity assisted projectile, but a terrible weapon system. Any conflict likely being already over by the time it does its tour of the solar system and arrives back, so it's probably better to just use the rocket fuel to build a conventional bomb. Or better yet, use nukes.
[0] Sorry Starman.
Specifically, although it was one of the vacuum-qualified test items, to be a useful flight test they'd have had to set the car up with life support piping into the suit. That's outside the scope of a mass simulator.
- the proving launch mass is only the mass of a Tesla? i mean thats great but i would have expected a much bigger mass for a fully functional satellite. but then again I dont know anything about satellites. how big are those? its definitely not space shuttle big. is the Falcon Heavy able to carry something as big as the space shuttle?
- i thought starman was orbiting mars. how does orbital decay look for something small like starman since it really can just get pulled in or out by basically any nearby planet?
Iridium sats are 700kg each, GEOsats are also less than that.
The upcoming James Webb Space Telescope's launch/payload mass is 6 200 kg.
The Falcon Heavy can push 1 400 000 kg, and 16 800 kg of that can be payload. To Mars.
I don't know whether weight was added (probably) or removed (very likely the stock batteries were removed) in preparation for its launch.
Update: According to Wikipedia, launch weight was 1,200 kg
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk's_Tesla_Roadster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellites_in_geosynch...
Echostar 1: 3,287 kg
Americom 7: 1,983 kg
Yamal 300k: 1,870 kg
Ciel-2: 5,561 kg
Horizons-1: 4,060 kg
EchoStar X: 4,333 kg
Amos 2: 1,370 kg
NSS-7: 4,692 kg
Star One B4: 2,495 kg
- For Roadster's orbit, most of the time it will be fine, however some have predicted that it will end up crashing on Venus in a few million years [0]. And that makes me wonder whether the Roadster has been properly disinfected (I very much doubt so).
Also, for one of your original questions, the car is completely alone on its orbit, not enclosed in anything. From what I understand [1] the last booster separated itself from the car before burning during re-entry. You can see clear and beautiful pictures of the car around Earth [2]. Edit : I was wrong, the car is still attached to the last booster. See [3]
[0]: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/15/orbital_calculation...
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/space-oddity...
[2]: https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/falco...
[3]: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/25016/what-all-is-...
If there are any tardigrades in the Tesla they'll probably be fine :)
The Shuttle could have carried more payload if it hadn't had to dedicate a lot of capacity to supporting the human being on board.
With rockets, the further you push something, the more energy it takes. Pushing something the size of a car past the orbit of Mars takes a lot more energy than putting a larger satellite in a lower orbit.
No, the PR team that he hires to make everyone think that he's so cool and with it thought "Hey wouldn't this be a great opportunity for synergy between two distinct brands that are owned by the same guy that's paying us to make him look cool?"
"It doesn't matter. I won't be in the history books anyway, only you. Franklin did this and Franklin did that and Franklin did some other damn thing. Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington, fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them - Franklin, Washington, and the horse - conducted the entire revolution by themselves."
According to the former Deputy Administrator of NASA, Lori Garver.
"SpaceX offered NASA the opportunity to get a free ride on this first launch. But the space agency viewed commercial development of this rocket as "competition" and refused their offer. Instead, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk put his own Tesla Roadster onboard, turning the event into a brilliant cross-marketing event."
http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/372994-spacex-could-sa...
She has pretty serious credentials to be saying it:
Anything that NASA wants to launch into space is an extremely expensive, one-of-a-kind science instrument that a team has spent years of their time on. It would be highly imprudent to launch something like that on a test mission. No one does that. The usual payload for a first flight is a concrete block or other mass simulator.
NASA and the Air Force made the right call in saying no. And Elon made the right call in turning this into a phenomenally inspiring event instead of a boring launch of a concrete block.
Launching a car is still great though. Scientific data isn't the only possible benefit from a space mission.
nitpick: SpaceX != Tesla.
I made a mashup which adds some music to it :)
http://awesomestarman.glitch.me
(autoplay audio, works on desktop only)
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/25016/what-all-is-...
And yes, it was carried into orbit with the upper stage of the Falcon Heavy.