
SpaceX successfully deploys the Star man - vanwilder77
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42969020
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Upas
The title of this post is incorrect. We have to wait a few hours to know if
the rocket man has made it to Mars orbit.

EDIT: It's not a Mars orbit, its a solar orbit that puts it close to Mars at
times.

From the linked article: "If all phases of the flight are successful - and
that will not be known until at least 6.5 hours after lift-off - the Tesla and
its passenger will be despatched into an elliptical orbit around the Sun that
reaches out as far as the Planet Mars."

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pikchurn
Actually, no, once the 2nd stage cuts off the trajectory is mostly fixed and
we know what orbit it is in. There are, I believe, two more small burns that
will be done to adjust the trajectory, but these are more of an adjustment to
what _kind_ of Martian transfer orbit it is in. It already has the hyperbolic
velocity to leave Earth's orbit, and enter solar orbit with an apogee at the
same distance as Mars.

In 6.5 hours SpaceX will have finished everything they wanted to test with
this flight I believe, including a number of post-launch checks of various
systems and sensors on the payload, and those re-ignition tests of the 2nd
stage.

~~~
Klathmon
Unless I'm mistaken, it's not on a trajectory out of Earth orbit currently.

It is in a parking orbit, where it will sit for a few hours and then will
reignite and will be set on a trajectory toward "martian orbit".

IIRC currently they are testing (or proving depending on how confident they
are) that they can have the second stage sit for several hours in space before
reignighting.

~~~
teraflop
I think you're correct. At stage 2 cutoff, they were showing a speed of
~26,000 km/h, which is approximately orbital velocity, not escape velocity.

~~~
Klathmon
Although I'm not fully correct. Mr. Musk just tweeted this:

>Upper stage restart nominal, apogee raised to 7000 km. Will spend 5 hours
getting zapped in Van Allen belts & then attempt final burn for Mars.

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/960988527159795712](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/960988527159795712)

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themanual
What happened to the core booster did that return?

~~~
nicolashahn
It suffered a rapid unscheduled disassembly, unfortunately

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MontagFTB
The Starman has his own live stream:
[https://youtu.be/aBr2kKAHN6M](https://youtu.be/aBr2kKAHN6M)

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mewm
To be accurate, I believe they call the the dummy "Star man", just if you
wanna edit the title

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KiDD
Mars Orbit? Really?

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pikchurn
No, it's a Martian transfer orbit, albeit without Mars at the other end.

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ars
Meaning it could have reached Mars, they just chose not to?

~~~
pikchurn
Meaning that they didn't launch at the right time to arrive at Mars, due to
where Mars is in its orbit currently. It'll pass through the imaginary circle
around the sun which is Mars' orbit, it's just that Mars will at a different
part of the orbit at that time.

But actually, it seems they decided to just empty the tanks and get as much
delta-v as possible, and it'll go all the way into the asteroid belt as a
result.

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dirkdk
Center core is gone, didn't land successfully. Well it was a test and most of
the flight succeeded
[https://twitter.com/kimballclark/status/960986447770656768](https://twitter.com/kimballclark/status/960986447770656768)

~~~
selckin
This could reference the video feed, was before 1&2 landed?

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dogma1138
The core looked like it had some engine fire just before the 2 boosters landed
and it wasn’t from the central engine.

~~~
mrguyorama
It also looked like it was falling sideways, but I didn't know the camera
orientation so I had no idea

