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Anybody saw the 'Don't panic' thing on the Tesla? Made me chuckle, they sure have a sense of humor.
by nafizh 9y ago
Anybody saw the 'Don't panic' thing on the Tesla? Made me chuckle, they sure have a sense of humor.
- nabla9 9y agoIt's reference to the HHGTTG. Tesla has Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy installed.
- johnohara 9y agoSaw the don't panic. Wondering if they packed a towel.
- ABS 9y agoof course they did :-) https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/936782477502246912 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/936782477502246912
- leonroy 9y agoApparently they stuck in the glove compartment ‘a copy of Douglas Adams' book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," along with a towel’. Source: http://m.dw.com/en/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-falcon-heavy-launch/a-42466661 http://m.dw.com/en/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-falcon-he...
- Swenrekcah 9y agoAs awesome as all that was, I can't help but feel sad that neither Douglas Adams nor David Bowie lived to see this.
- pomber 9y agoNor Asimov. They mentioned a copy of The Foundation series was on board.
- Paul-ish 9y agoDoes anyone know how long a book (paper) would last in space?
- pkroll 9y agoWhy wouldn't it last functionally forever? It's now in vacuum, and eventually will get to whatever temperature the sun can bake it to at that distance from the sun... I'm guessing it'll be there as long as the car is.
- OtterCoder 9y agoRadiation might be a concern. It could possibly embrittle the paper over time.
- elihu 9y agoI'd guess that the temperature fluctuations and radiation would be pretty hard on paper. Zero humidity would probably make it brittle as well.
- redler 9y agoThey did. It's in the glove box.
- bolasanibk 9y agoThey did. The glove box has a copy of the 'The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy' plus a towel
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- johnohara 9y agoMakes my day that much better. Giving approval to that kind of lightheartedness shows great confidence in the team's ability and makes overall morale palpable. Well done.
- weej 9y agoLoved it. Absolutely amazing. https://i.imgur.com/KF87gOR.jpg https://i.imgur.com/KF87gOR.jpg I posted more screen shots of launch: https://imgur.com/a/gh410 https://imgur.com/a/gh410
- komali2 9y agoI absolutely love that Musk is putting a car into Mars orbit. Assuming mankind doesn't have an extinction event (or dark ages event), it is extremely likely we'll populate the solar system over the next millenia. In 200 years, Martian children can look up in the sky and know that one of the quickly moving visible satellites is a hilarious, old-Earth car. Depending on how accessible orbit is from planets over the next couple hundred years, it could very well be some sort of space station museum. Or, imagine we hit a dark age and bounce back, and this event is lost to history. Five hundred years later we manage to get some people to Mars orbit and they find a fucking car in a capsule with a little mannequin stuffed into it flinging around the planet at hundreds of kph. All while it's blasting David Bowie over their radios.
- njarboe 9y agoIt would be cooler if it was going to be in Mars orbit, but it is just going into an elliptical solar orbit that will vary in distance from the sun between Earth orbit and and Mars orbit.
- no-s 9y agoHmm, they said heliocentric several times. But it’s a cool orbit no matter how you slice the the pork chop. Pretty sure this is intended to be similar to a “mars cycler” orbit. A “mars cycler” is an interplanetary space station which follows a sort of transfer orbit between earth and mars. This provides a cushy radiation shielded environment for interplanetary travelers and economizes on propulsion by leveraging gravity assist. IIRC some guy named Aldrin came up the gist of the design.
- megy 9y agoPart of me enjoys it, but a big part of hates that he put a car there. I don't associate cars with anything good, only bad.
- justAnotherNET 9y agoThat sounds like a personal problem. This is an amazing achievement and a huge PR win for space!
- PinguTS 9y agoStill don't understand this waste of ressources. Waste of ressources to build this Tesla Roadster. And then the waste to kick it into space. It is not that we are littering our earth itself. We now do it in space as well.
- maxaf 9y agoConsidering the historic significance of Musk's mission, a little extravagance is entirely deserved.
- ctdonath 9y agoADVERTISING. The amount of coverage both Tesla & SpaceX got from launching the Roadster equates to advertising costing considerably more than the cost of the car.
- MBCook 9y agoYou’ve got to launch something. I’m sure you could launch an equally heavy concrete block to prove you can but... what’s the fun in that?
- irrational 9y agoThey could've launched a wheel of cheese.
- MBCook 9y agoI would support that.
- icc97 9y agoBest advertising ever. This is what Pirelli used to say about their calendar. It costs so much to get a front page ad in a newspaper, it's worth all the costs of the calendar. Who cares though, it's just so fucking amazing that there exists a geek with enough cash and gumption to get a car flying through space with h2g2 in the glove box.