Falcon Heavy Launch

[deluxestogie]

Actual streaming video.

How insane is this? When I was young, I watched the launches of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, narrated live by Walter Chronkite. I watched today's launch.

This is closer to a science fiction novel than space efforts of the past. A private company builds the world's most powerful rocket, and tests it by launching their sister company's Tesla roadster into an elliptical solar orbit that reaches out as far as the orbit of Mars. And the roadster's sound system is playing David Bowie's Space Oddity on a continuous loop.

And the sight of both booster rockets landing side-by-side, simultaneously--just like a fake Sci-Fi movie. A private company! Not a government.

Unlike the toppled statue of Ozymandias, this roadster is expected to cruise along, just like it is, for at least a billion years.

Bob

 

[Jitterbugdude]

That's pretty awesome. As a kid, I too watched a lot of the NASA launches. I even collected a series of coins/tokens that commemorated all the launches. In the case of the Falcon Heavy I hope that they've worked out the bugs with HAL.

 

[deluxestogie]

Oops!

Bob

 

[Charly]

Yes, very impressive !
(but I have to say that the DeluXestogie Heavy impressed me a lot too ).

 

[Smokin Harley]

Actual streaming video.

How insane is this? When I was young, I watched the launches of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, narrated live by Walter Chronkite. I watched today's launch.

This is closer to a science fiction novel than space efforts of the past. A private company builds the world's most powerful rocket, and tests it by launching their sister company's Tesla roadster into an elliptical solar orbit that reaches out as far as the orbit of Mars. And the roadster's sound system is playing David Bowie's Space Oddity on a continuous loop.

And the sight of both booster rockets landing side-by-side, simultaneously--just like a fake Sci-Fi movie. A private company! Not a government.

Unlike the toppled statue of Ozymandias, this roadster is expected to cruise along, just like it is, for at least a billion years.

Bob

I still have in my possession ,a very yellowed Cheerios sponsored Space Shuttle Enterprise (prototype shuttle) kit , including a small booklet and an iron-on transfer that somehow I never begged my mom to iron on any piece of clothing. I'm wondering what its value is. It has been opened but still has my name and the address label where we lived on the front of the envelope (with the official space shuttle prototype pictured on the front as well) .It was supposed to have been accompanied by a 1/24 scale plastic model from I think Monogram ,which I never received. I'm wondering how many probably got thrown into a giant warehouse never to be seen again except by maybe upper managements family members of the Cheerios offer redemption center.

 

[deluxestogie]

Bye bye!

 

[BarG]

I thought that was awesome,and wierdly funny. A private company to boot. Does any one know how the third booster faired that was supposed to land on the ship at sea?

 

[DIY Pete]

It missed the mark and crashed into the ocean at about 300 miles per hour.

Pete

 

[DIY Pete]

As a side note Spacex may be a private company but it is heavy funded with taxpayer dollars. This takes nothing away from the cool factor and it's nice to talk about space exploration again.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html

Pete

 

[BarG]

Thanks pete, neat to know. Nasa is fully funded by tax dollars and they now have some competition.

 

[deluxestogie]

The roadster is in an orbit around the sun of about 558 days. But Earth is moving, so I don't know when it will be close enough again to spot with a telescope (?Teslascope?).

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Wouldn't it take weeks or months to even get past Mars' orbit?

 

[BarG]

I wonder who has all of Tesla's research that disapeared when he died.That would be awesome to see. [the research]

 

[deluxestogie]

Wouldn't it take weeks or months to even get past Mars' orbit?

The Tesla is apparently expected to pass Mars this October, then rapidly dive toward the sun. A 558 day orbit is roughly 1.5 years. Beyond that, the math makes my head hurt.

Bob

 

[BarG]

To sum it up. Tesla lives on, Poor choice on music though, I would have prefered leonard skinnard.But when you design the baddest rocket you get to pick.

 

[deluxestogie]

"SpaceX Falcon Heavy payload has been assigned an interplanetary ID: Tesla Roadster (AKA: Starman, 2018-017A). The Trajectory name is tesla_s3."

 

[deluxestogie]

Where's the Tesla Roadster Now?

Mars orbit is red. Earth orbit is blue. Tesla orbit is green.

To see where the roadster is at any particular moment, go to:
http://orbitsimulator.com/gravitySimulatorCloud/simulations/1436303468965_orbitViewer.html
and enter "roadster" into the Import Object dialog. Pick a color for it, and hit Import.

Bob

 

[Dr.Pierce]

The other morning, whilst driving to work. I happened to look up to the south, and there it was. Falcon9, leaving the atmosphere. Darn near drove off the road, gawking at it.

It looked kinda like a giant green translucent squid up there in the morning predawn twilight. Never seen anything like that before. These are strange days.