Posted on 11/05/2018 3:35:41 PM PST by BenLurkin
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk is a big "Hitchhiker's Guide" fan, as Starman's Roadster shows. The car's entertainment display was programmed to read "Don't Panic!" — the phrase that adorns the cover of the eponymous electronic guidebook in Adams' beloved series.
Musk has said that he launched the Roadster and Starman because the duo is a lot more fun than the typical inert-mass dummy payload... Launching a satellite or other valuable spacecraft wasn't an option, given the risks inherent in maiden flights.
The Roadster and Starman will come within a few hundred thousand kilometers of our planet in 2091, according to an orbit-modeling study. The authors of that study determined that the car will slam into either Venus or Earth, likely within the next few tens of millions of years. They give the space car a 6 percent chance of hitting Earth in the next 1 million years, and a 2.5 percent chance of smacking Venus in that span.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Grissom’s Restored Mercury Capsule is on display in Hutchison, Ks Space Museum. They did a great restoration on it. It’s sort of an out of the way place, but it’s a fabulous museum. I also think it has the Apollo 13 Command Module as well.
Is it still under warranty?
You can get that on vinyl now.
When I showed my school age son the flight video, he thought it was a music video. No, it is real.
“It’s a car, in space.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Why is there a car in space?”
“Elon Musk put it there.”
“For Youtube?”
“For science.”
“Why a car?”
“He owns a car company.”
“So it is an ad.”
“He owns the rocket company, too.”
“Why does he own a rocket company?”
“To send satellites into space. And, ideally people.”
“Is that a real person in the car?”
“No, fake, but a real car.”
“Why send a car?”
“He’s testing his process of sending groceries to astronauts on Mars, and he chose a car to send up because he had one.”
“Will they send cars to Mars?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why are you watching this?”
“I think it is cool.”
“Is it real?”
“Yes.”
“He put a car on a rocket to send to space so it could go to Mars.”
“Yeah.”
“Print out the news article, no one at school will believe me if I show them the picture.”
That was decent in show advertising.
In Larry Niven’s scifi book “Protector”, Belters periodically did stuff like that. The main character finds an old space probe, debates going home and paying all the taxes or flying past the Belt to Earth to try to sell the collectible for a fortune without Belt taxes.
He chooses to try to run to Earth, but his unusual course coincides with a Protector coming to Earth ...
That had to have become a million screen savers. And that was the point.
If you can put a car into a Solar orbit that goes beyond Mars, you can easily put a semi-trailer sized payload into Clarke orbit. That may have been the selling point.
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