Elon Musk's Space X Rocket Launch Tonight

Jalapeno

Wish I'd been there - the noise would've been stupendous.

Ravenous

ToneControl said:

sinbaadi said:

ToneControl said:

what's to stop the car somersaulting forever?
Or have they fitted stabilising rockets to it somewhere?

Why would it start to somersault?

physics
it's probably a trillion trillion trillion to one that it would just happen to stay pointed in the same direction it travels after separation

Also even if it could be launched in a perfectly straight line, eventually things like gravity gradients and the Yarkovsky effect (a science thermal radiation thing) will get it rotating eventually.  So you're right, it's just going to be up there for several million years pointing in no particular direction.

57Deluxe

I bet the PRS are in a total spin on how they can levy the royalties on Major Tom for a million years...

Kalimna

I wonder if they packed a towel into the car as well???
Marvellous stuff, and really quite breathtaking.

Adam

ICBM

Just imagine the technological puzzle when an advanced civilisation millions of years in the future find it, and try to work out how an obviously surface-transport-only vehicle got into space, and why...

Fretwired

thermionic said:

It’s an advert for an expensive car. Yawn...

One man with too much money's ego on show .. @ICBM is right .. Musk has the aura of a Bond villain.

Launching a piece of junk into space isn't very rock n' roll ... Yuri Gagarin was rock n' roll ...

Emp_Fab

Oh come on you grinches !  Launching anything into space that isn't another bloody tv / spy / satellite is cool - especially if it's something utterly frivolous like a sports car....  and to Bowie.  Keith Moon only drove a car into a swimming pool - Elon Musk launched one into space FFS !

Kalimna

Perhaps launching a car isnt rock'n'roll, but having 2 of the 3 propellant stages land *almost* synchronously certainly is. That is quite a feat.

Adam

DesVegas

Spot on Emp and great photo @Neil ;

Fretwired

Emp_Fab said:

Oh come on you grinches !  Launching anything into space that isn't another bloody tv / spy / satellite is cool - especially if it's something utterly frivolous like a sports car....  and to Bowie.  Keith Moon only drove a car into a swimming pool - Elon Musk launched one into space FFS !

In a country where millions can't afford basic healthcare a billionaire can fire one of his cars into space. Personally I think its pathetic - all those bright people and billions of dollars wasted shoving yet more junk into space. It's not rock n' roll. Its not even cool. 

Call me Mr Grinch, but Musk is just Howard Hughes MK2.

crunchman

Apparently they overshot:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/07/elon-musks-spacex-rocket-heading-towards-asteroid-belt-overshooting/

They are saying that Jupiter will probably make the orbit unstable within decades.

Ravenous

Good grief, people whining about a few rocket tests - while they type on computer keyboards, powered by a multi-gigawatt power grid, semiconductors developed with space age technology, their daily lives depending on communications satellites, weather satellites, and god knows what else.

Just carry on moaning and enjoy your caves. The rest of us will be fine thanks.

Sassafras

Neil said:

My son saw it from his back yard in Florida (he's about 12 miles from KSC) and took a camera phone pic...

So even your son is in on the gigantic hoax that space travel exists!
  

Neil

Sassafras said:

Neil said:

My son saw it from his back yard in Florida (he's about 12 miles from KSC) and took a camera phone pic...

So even your son is in on the gigantic hoax that space travel exists!
  

Afraid so.

Majorscale

Fretwired said:

Emp_Fab said:

Oh come on you grinches !  Launching anything into space that isn't another bloody tv / spy / satellite is cool - especially if it's something utterly frivolous like a sports car....  and to Bowie.  Keith Moon only drove a car into a swimming pool - Elon Musk launched one into space FFS !

In a country where millions can't afford basic healthcare a billionaire can fire one of his cars into space. Personally I think its pathetic - all those bright people and billions of dollars wasted shoving yet more junk into space. It's not rock n' roll. Its not even cool. 

Call me Mr Grinch, but Musk is just Howard Hughes MK2.

I don't like the idea of creating junk anywhere either, although in this case it was a rocket test and there had to be a payload of something. Instead of using blocks of concrete or metal (the usual payload approach used by space agencies), Elon used one of his cars. Same net result from a test standpoint, but definitely a great marketing coup at the same time.

menamestom

Fretwired said:

Emp_Fab said:

Oh come on you grinches !  Launching anything into space that isn't another bloody tv / spy / satellite is cool - especially if it's something utterly frivolous like a sports car....  and to Bowie.  Keith Moon only drove a car into a swimming pool - Elon Musk launched one into space FFS !

In a country where millions can't afford basic healthcare a billionaire can fire one of his cars into space. Personally I think its pathetic - all those bright people and billions of dollars wasted shoving yet more junk into space. It's not rock n' roll. Its not even cool. 

Call me Mr Grinch, but Musk is just Howard Hughes MK2.

The car was just a dummy load wasn't it, to test the rocket?

Once the rocket has been proven it will launch comms satellites, GPS systems, weather satellites etc.

The goal of the company is to drive the cost of getting things into orbit down and many of the payloads will be at the cost of taxpayers and for the good of everybody.   I wouldn't let the fact they had a bit of fun with the test distract from the fact that the future payloads could bring a great benefit to millions of people.

 

crunchman

Is a big rocket like this needed to put things into orbit?  I thought this was more about getting to the moon and beyond.

Fretwired

Majorscale said:

Fretwired said:

Emp_Fab said:

Oh come on you grinches !  Launching anything into space that isn't another bloody tv / spy / satellite is cool - especially if it's something utterly frivolous like a sports car....  and to Bowie.  Keith Moon only drove a car into a swimming pool - Elon Musk launched one into space FFS !

In a country where millions can't afford basic healthcare a billionaire can fire one of his cars into space. Personally I think its pathetic - all those bright people and billions of dollars wasted shoving yet more junk into space. It's not rock n' roll. Its not even cool. 

Call me Mr Grinch, but Musk is just Howard Hughes MK2.

I don't like the idea of creating junk anywhere either, although in this case it was a rocket test and there had to be a payload of something. Instead of using blocks of concrete or metal (the usual payload approach used by space agencies), Elon used one of his cars. Same net result from a test standpoint, but definitely a great marketing coup at the same time.

Right ... but the aim was to fly it Mars so a little more than testing a payload. That's gone wrong so now a dummy in a space suit will be whizzing round the solar system while the cars body rots ... and we're trying to get people to recycle more and not dump plastics.

DiscoStu

It was a test flight and needed a dummy payload to prove it was capable of launching a heavy payload. He had to put something in there so why not have some fun with it?
Mission accomplished.

not_the_dj

DiscoStu said:

It was a test flight and needed a dummy payload to prove it was capable of launching a heavy payload. He had to put something in there so why not have some fun with it?
Mission accomplished.

If you're gonna build a time machine out of a car, why not do it in style ;-)