
Elon Musk: Falcon Heavy's first payload will be my Tesla Roadster to Mars - mastax
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/936782477502246912
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Cshelton
It’s perfect if you think about it. They need weight for the launch, but why
use expensive equipment when the odds are high it won’t even leave Earth
atmosphere. It’s a massive PR stunt, I mean, what other car company has a car
just orbiting Mars casually... and yeah, I guess a large orbit around Mars
would just keep orbiting for a Billion years haha.

25 years from now: Did we get station five’s orbit around Mars set yet? No
sir, we had to move it because Elon’s damn car was orbiting too close to us...
dammit Elon

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justinator
How about use the weight/space as an orbiting time capsule put together by
elementary students to help them be interested in
space/science/math/engineering/etc?

I still remember those packets of tomato seeds we received in like 6th grade
whose past generations where in Earth's oribit for a few years. Like, they're
just tomato seeds, but we spent a few classes talking about them, growing
tomatoes, etc.

:shrug:

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Cshelton
I mean, I guess we can throw some stuff in the trunk... and the frunk too ;p

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AdamJacobMuller
And the glove compartment.

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natch
An actual Russell’s Teapot
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot))
would have been a good addition to the solar system, but this is even better.

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perilunar
They could put a teapot in the trunk. Almost all Martian orbits would place it
between the Earth and Mars half the time, thus fulfilling Russel's assertion.
Or they could eject the teapot along the way.

Must be china though. I suggest a white porcelain Melitta teapot. ;)

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dolguldur
So all these clean-room precautions that you normally see when people work on
satellites are what for again?

I thought that was because we don’t want to contaminate space.

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lucozade
It’s so they don’t contaminate the sensitive instruments on the satellite.

If it was about contaminating space they probably wouldn’t leave so much junk
there.

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abhi3
Space Junk and bio-contamination are two separate things. Should the car fail
to enter orbit and crash onto mars or any other body there's a possibility
that it could introduce life where it does not belong.

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electic
Maybe I am not reading this right. However, it seems he wants to put a Tesla
Roadster in orbit of Mars? If so, that is a terrible idea. Our own planet has
so much space junk floating around that it is becoming unmanageable and
actually harming future launches. Why ruin the orbit of another planet? I
certainly hope this car has some sort of de-orbiting mechanism.

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oconnor663
I think the idea is that they have to put _something_ there as a test, before
they can send things that really matter?

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nerfhammer
maybe send something that's easier to sanitize of biological contaminants

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dpflan
Fully charged and ready to drive upon arrival? :)

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gpm
Unlikely to even arrive on mars, typically we need to make course adjustments
en route and a car doesn't exactly have thrusters. Hence the comment in the
tweet about being in deep space for a billion years or so.

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sorahn
He said the destination is “mars orbit”. So if it gets there, it should be
hanging out waiting for humanity to get there.

I wonder how long the battery pack on the tesla will run the radio.

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Cshelton
But! The underbelly of the car would be a solar panel =p Crank the radio up to
11! (Which is funny because Tesla’s volume actually goes to 11)

So actually, they'd for sure have to disable the heater on the battery, and I
dunno, can the battery operate enough power to power the stereo when it's
negative crazy low temp in space?

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perilunar
This is wonderful. They'll need a crash test dummy named Tom in the driver's
seat of course.

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wallace_f
Anyone know what would be the oppprtubity cost they're foregoing of just
putting fuel, oxygen up there? Would it be expensive to retrieve it in orbit?

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kijin
You really, _really_ don't want to put fuel and oxidizer where they don't
belong.

If you run fuel lines to the cargo compartment and something goes wrong with
the mission halfway to Mars, it would be much more difficult to figure out
whether the incident was caused by a fault in the rocket's design or by the
one-off modifications.

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chossenger
I may be reading this wrong, but I thought he meant as spare resources for
once we _do_ get to Mars, not as extra fuel for the rocket itself.

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wallace_f
That is exactly what I meant

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lexxed
One day someone be driving a tesla on mars playing Space Oddity

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api
He said it would be the silliest thing ever. That's silly.

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cma
Tacky

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chmaynard
Musk is becoming unhinged. If Tesla is to survive, he needs to resign (or be
removed) from the Tesla CEO role. That would free him up to focus exclusively
on SpaceX.

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mgiannopoulos
And you are basing this on what exactly? Please elaborate.

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chmaynard
When Tesla decided to proceed with the Model 3 project, the most sensible
course of action would have been to partner with a large auto maker who knew
how to build and service a mass-market automobile. The obvious choice would
have been Toyota, a company that had wasted years on fuel cell technology and
needed to pivot quickly towards electric vehicles. Toyota had the
manufacturing expertise and Tesla had the technology. Together they could have
rocked the market. Instead, Musk insulted and mocked Toyota management, making
a collaboration unlikely. That was a serious mistake.

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mgiannopoulos
Tesla never had any plans to be only a "car tech" company. If Musk was
"sensible" he wouldn't even have started the company in the first place.

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mikeash
And he definitely wouldn’t have started a rocket company.

