Livestream: Elon Musk's Red Tesla Roadster In Space

[Aragorn]

I don't know how long this footage is going to be streamed, but if you want to see (a decisively non-flat) Planet Earth in high definition from within the cabin of an electric roadster floating through space, then now is the time.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6M

[enjoy being]

It is going to get awfully crowded up there if every billionaire starts shooting their publicity gimmicks into orbit.
There's just something a bit off about this. Apart from the tackiness of the car and the dummy and the ruination of the Bowie track, its something else that is the most tacky or affronting, I can't quite put my finger on it apart from the act of littering whilst seemingly endeavouring to be some sort of role model for someone. I guess that is it, it just shows that really, he is just another consumer jock.

[Aragorn]

I'm guessing that the only one crazy enough they could find for driving that thing through space would be The Stig.

Or maybe it's The Stig's Interplanetary Cousin.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMAkC4vM5aE

[Fred Steeves]

The live feed is obviously an elaborate hoax, as every thinking and informed person is by now well aware that the earth is indeed flat.

[Aragorn]

The live feed is obviously an elaborate hoax, as every thinking and informed person is by now well aware that the earth is indeed flat.

And meanwhile, that guy who's seeking to prove that Earth would be flat by launching himself into space doesn't seem to be able to get his rocket off the ground.

[WantDisclosure]

Shame on them for providing zero information in the Description:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6M

[ArtyCarl]

I watched the launch live, like many people, but something about this one really excited me. The way those two boosters came back to earth and landed together on their targets was nothing short of science fiction to me and evoked memories of being in awe of the Apollo missions as a boy. The only thing that went through my mind was...surely tucked away in a secret hangar somewhere there is the means to get a craft into space without burning tons of fuel like that....can you imagine aliens looking at that and laughing their asses off at how primitive we are.

[Dumpster Diver]

possible secret space stuff during the launch:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFdVZyGUwI8


starts at 3:08

[Dreamtimer]

The rockets coming back to land was quite a sight. Ben notes something interesting. And I'm yet again annoyed at the 'editing' for public consumption.

What's the purported purpose of this launch? And then what's the underlying purpose? (the car, dummy and song are a cute distraction, methinks)

[Aragorn]

Don’t panic: The chance of this space-traveling sports car
hitting Earth is just 6% in the next million years

Source: Science

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk grabbed the world’s attention last week after launching his Tesla Roadster into space. But his publicity stunt has a half-life way beyond even what he could imagine—the Roadster should continue to orbit through the solar system, perhaps slightly battered by micrometeorites, for a few tens of millions of years. Now, a group of researchers specializing in orbital dynamics has analyzed the car’s orbit for the next few million years. And although it’s impossible to map it out precisely, there is a small chance that one day it could return and crash into Earth. But don’t panic: That chance is just 6% over a million years, and it would likely burn up as it entered the atmosphere.

Hanno Rein of the University of Toronto in Canada and his colleagues regularly model the motions of planets and exoplanets. “We have all the software ready, and when we saw the launch last week we thought, ‘Let’s see what happens.’ So we ran the [Tesla’s] orbit forward for several million years,” he says. The Falcon Heavy rocket from SpaceX propelled the car out toward Mars, but the sun’s gravity will bring it swinging in again some months from now in an elliptical orbit, so it will repeatedly cross the orbits of Mars, Earth, and Venus until it sustains a fatal accident. Rein says the car’s predicted orbit is similar to the many near-Earth asteroids that drift throughout the inner solar system. Other researchers have charted the fluctuating brightness of the car in space to calculate that it is rotating roughly once every 5 minutes.

The Tesla Roadster inside the fairing of the Falcon Heavy before launch

The Roadster’s first close encounter with Earth will be in 2091—the first of many in the millennia to come. But because tiny differences in trajectory before an encounter lead to huge differences afterward, the orbit is essentially chaotic and impossible to map out with certainty.

By tweaking orbital parameters and running their model repeatedly, the team could make some statistical predictions about the car’s future path. Over a million years, the Tesla has a 6% probability of an Earth collision and a 2.5% chance of crashing on Venus, the researchers reported yesterday on the physics preprint server arXiv. After 3 million years, the odds of an Earth crash rise to 10%. In the longer term, Rein estimates that the Roadster has a 50% chance of lasting a few tens of millions of years. Unclear is whether it will end its journey as debris on some planetary surface or as a blazing hot ball of metal plunging into the sun.

If it does come crashing into Earth, Musk doesn’t need to worry about his third party insurance. “It will either burn up or maybe one component will reach the surface,” Rein says. “There is no risk to health and safety whatsoever.”

Source: Science

[enjoy being]

If you have the money, it seems you are allowed to chuck whatever you like up in space without permission from the rest of humanity. I presume he paid for the rights to use the David Bowie song too?
And what was it? something like a $100million loss posted by the company for this year? Of course, that was post, AFTER the launch.
It's completely fine to litter space with car wrecks. Not even considered, everyone thinks it's cool. Well except me, I'd rather fill that rocket with a CEO's of certain and said company/s and shoot THEM into orbit. Maybe play, Ding dong the witch is dead, or a totally new song involving lyrics mentioning exploratory probing.

[Aragorn]

If you have the money, it seems you are allowed to chuck whatever you like up in space without permission from the rest of humanity.

It was not Elon Musk's intent to litter space, but to test and demonstrate the new Falcon Heavy launch rocket, which was designed to haul large cargo and/or loads of passengers into space, because Musk intends this rocket to be used as a launch vehicle for a colonization mission to Mars.

Don't forget that SpaceX is also the only company so far — at least, to the best of my knowledge — that has managed to gracefully land its booster rockets on dry land again — not to mention on a floating platform at sea — after the payload was delivered into space. So far, NASA has never been able to do any of that, and most of the space junk flying around up there is either from NASA or from the French, the Russians, the Chinese and the Indians.

Granted, launching his own — and probably well-used — Tesla Roadster into space is somewhat of a stunt, but all things considered, its flight through space should be less dramatic (and less hazardous) than that of the average satellite that gets launched up there and that is bound to come down again in a few decades.

Musk may be a billionaire, but at least he's trying to make a difference for the better from inside the system by showing the rest of the industry — actually, multiple industries — a future without further pollution and without needlessly wasting resources. Sure, he's eccentric — and judging by his body language, I would say the odds are huge that he's on the autism spectrum — but at least he's a visionary who thinks about something other than lining his own pockets with money, like all those alleged "philanthropists" who made it on the cover of Time Magazine. You know, people like Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Steve Jobs, George Soros, et al.

Methinks thou art way too negative, my Kiwi friend.

[enjoy being]

Methinks thou art way too negative, my Kiwi friend.

You are entitled to your opinion, it doesn't change mine :-)

Let me qualify that, in that I don't agree with humans being in space.

[Dreamtimer]

That's so interesting to me, Nothing. I've always been fascinated by sci fi and love Star Wars and Star Trek. At the same time, the idea of actually leaving the earth to be in space is almost untenable. I would never want to stay for more than a short while. And I'd never go galavanting around in a space ship, despite my love for space travel shows and stories. I most certainly belong down here.

Why are you against humans in space?

[Beate 7]

It is going to get awfully crowded up there if every billionaire starts shooting their publicity gimmicks into orbit.
There's just something a bit off about this. Apart from the tackiness of the car and the dummy and the ruination of the Bowie track, its something else that is the most tacky or affronting, I can't quite put my finger on it apart from the act of littering whilst seemingly endeavouring to be some sort of role model for someone. I guess that is it, it just shows that really, he is just another consumer jock.

We are already massively littered w. space-junk. Just wait till he sends up his 4000 satellites for 5-G, which will blanket the earth with microwaves. And his is not the only company waiting in the wings... the process includes using all the light standards in every town, and even private houses on suburban streets for the broadcasters to latch on to... It's an f-ing nightmare lining up, just so you can download a film in 1/2 a minute? I don't think so.