Musk sent a car into space as a publicity stunt.
My colleagues liked it, but I found it ... disappointing, that it seemed to signal an end of an era that did see space as a serious thing, like in the film For All Mankind.
I'd say maybe 10% of that stunt was for publicity. The rocket had to be tested, it had to include a payload, and sending a suit to space provided extra data as well.
edit: let's also not forget that there always been an element of humor in spaceflight. Apollo 10's callsigns were Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Watch the funny moonwalk videos. Read transcripts of flights. It's okay to have a laugh in space. The astronauts who make it to Mars will sorely need it.
It's like the internet used to be in the old green screen and bang paths days.
I remember everyone from DARPA on down had wonderful senses of humor. Today, even on HN which is supposed to represent the best of the internet, humor is largely frowned upon, or replaced with anger.
Hopefully this slow opening up of space to the masses won't mean making everything sterile and boring, like happened to the 'net.
It was the dominant media image at the time. It was 100% publicity.
There is a difference between convivial behaviour between people on a mission, and a stunt by a private company.
I find the Pioneer Plaque cool and thought provoking. Launching a roadster into space? Not so much.
Maybe the inscription on one of its PCBs will stimulate your unprovoked thoughts: https://i.redd.it/7agxu1qjdz071.jpg
Yes, it was kind of meme-y and marketing-y. But it is a business, and I also don't think being serious about something means you can never make a joke about it.
Destroying a car that retails for years of many folks' income in a flashy, ostentatious manner is going to look like lighting cigars with $100s to many people.
(I could understand people complaining about symbolism of sending a sports car, of all things, to be a first private industry artifact in interplanetary space. But this doesn't seem to be a majority complaint.)
Also: even the boring test mass payload would also cost "years of many folks' income". Not even counting the integration. Big things just costs big money - that's life for you. If someone is so sensitive about this, they probably shouldn't watch anything related to rockets at all.
Of course. I'm not talking about considered opinion, just knee-jerk human reactions to headlines.
You can tell people they're wrong if you want. Let me know how that goes for you.
Yes, let's instead all nod and smile to people's inconsiderate knee-jerk reactions. Let me know how that goes for you.
The point was to test emergency response, processes, etc.
To make it fun, they chose zombies as the cause. Within a week of the media hearing of it, the entire exercise was canceled.
Zombies, plague, natural disaster, nuclear accident, it mattered not, the tests were for existing response mechanisms, but oh no! Can't be fun!
Bah.
This is why I was disappointed, because it marks a departure from things auspiciously done with consideration "for all mankind".
A publicity stunt I wasn't disappointed in, was the twitter account for the Philae Lander. It also got a lot of media coverage. https://twitter.com/philae2014
The point isn't humour, rather the context. One stunt is for the benefit of a business, with what I find dubious goals for launching a rocket to start with, the other, to promote a project for "all mankind".
This just seems like such a stretch for something to get mad at Elon about.
They needed to test the rocket. They used a couple of flight-proven (used) boosters that their competitors all would have throw into the trash, and instead of flying a hunk of concrete, flew one of Elon's cars.
The car, by the way, is symbolic in that it did usher in the end of ICE vehicles. Other companies tried to do EVs and failed, Tesla made it happen.
Is it really better if the car had sat in a museum instead? What better symbolism could there be than to put it into a sort of museum in orbit around our sun? The day we are able to go and visit that car will be another hugely symbolic turning point for humanity.
I do agree that there are better things than publicity stunts to do with dummy payloads. You don't need to launch a multi-million-dollar satellite, but it would be low risk to launch a low-cost payload with corner reflectors for laser identification and distance measurement, chirping radio transmitters, or sensors, clocks, or radios for telemetry.
You can construct a Cubesat for on the order of $10k, but it used to cost 10x that to launch and now costs about that much for a SpaceX rideshare to SSO. Surely you could construct something with at least a little utility to use as a dummy payload.
They didn't bite.