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Tesla Roadster has been officially logged as a celestial object by NASA
- s_dev 9y agoOne of the arguments against theism used to be Russell's Celestial Teapot. Now there will actually be a sophisticatedly designed and constructed object just orbiting the Sun.
- FreakyT 9y agoRelevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1866/ https://xkcd.com/1866/ Personally I'm still waiting for someone to actually do this and put a literal teapot into orbit.
- ComodoHacker 9y agoI won't be surprised if they put a real teapot somewhere.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y agoThere may or may not be a teapot in the trunk of the Tesla. Musk isn't saying.
- saltcured 9y agoWhat would Russel have to say about a parking ticket under the wiper on the roadster? Or "wash me" scrawled in space dust on its rear hatch...
- ynniv 9y agoFastest production car ever built.
- perseusprime11 9y agoIs it a working model? does it have an engine?
- mhandley 9y agoIt has a huge great rocket engine and fuel tanks attached. Does it still qualify as "production" with that minor modification?
- perseusprime11 9y agoNo. Aliens should be able to take this and drive on their roads.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoShould be able to if they can fit new batteries in.
- stouset 9y agoAs far as we’ve been led to believe, yes to both. It is supposedly a fully typical and operational Tesla Roadster.
- GlenTheMachine 9y agoI very seriously doubt that it launched with the lithium-ion batteries installed. And I'm almost certain the tires were not inflated.
- perseusprime11 9y agoI agree with your assessment. They can't risk Lithium-ion in space temperatures and pressures. What do you think of the spaceman? Did they bolt him on to the car seat?
- ynniv 9y agoThe 2008 Roadster had a nominal curb weight of 1,305kg. Remove the 450kg battery and it should be 855kg, much less than the "~1,250kg" mass reported by NASA.
- Robotbeat 9y ago
- bmcusick 9y agoThis NASA filing undercuts Elon's claim that the Roadster is headed for the Asteroid belt. 1.7 AU is past Mars (1.5 AU) but well short of Ceres (2.77 AU). I think it's fair to call him out for unreasonable exaggeration on that one.
- dtparr 9y agoYeah I'm unclear if they were exaggerating, or just wrong. It seems unlikely you'd generate a plot showing an intentionally wrong trajectory/aphelion that could be shot down by later observation. I'm actually wondering if they just had insufficient or insufficiently accurate data initially on its position/velocity and as they got more observation time, corrected it. >But astronomers online noticed some discrepancies with the numbers Musk tweeted, and SpaceX ultimately sent a revised orbit to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Wednesday (You can find it by selecting “target body” -143205.) The new orbit shows that the car will indeed travel farther out than the orbit of Mars, but not far enough to make it to the asteroid belt. The belt begins about 329 million miles from the Sun, and the Tesla will reach a distance about 160 million miles away from the Solar System’s star. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falcon-heavy-roadster-orbit-asteroid-belt-elon-musk-mars https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falc...
- beambot 9y agoThat still definitely sets the record for most miles traveled by an automobile.
- bmcusick 9y agoAnd with so little wear and tear! Sure, the ionizing radiation will eventually do a number on the paint job, but compared to any other car that's travelled 180 million miles, it looks FANTASTIC!
- tlb 9y agoWikipedia gives a scatterplot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#/media/File:Main_belt_e_vs_a.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#/media/File:Main... There are some dots as close as 1.7 AU.
- ldenneau 9y agoThe ATLAS near-Earth asteroid survey (full disclosure: I am on this project) detected the Roadster last night as part of routine operations: https://twitter.com/fallingstarIfA/status/962013418143195141 https://twitter.com/fallingstarIfA/status/962013418143195141
- mhandley 9y agoOdd that it doesn't mention the Falcon 9 stage 2 that the Tesla is still attached to. That's much larger than the Tesla itself, so you'd have thought it worth mentioning.
- jeffwass 9y agoAre there any pictures of the Tesla + Falcon stage together? All pictures I’ve seen of the Tesla were carefully cropped to show only the car.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dtparr 9y agoI don't think they were actually cropped, I think the way they setup the roadster on an "incline" and then placed camera mounts to capture the driver means that none of them are pointed 'down' at the 2nd stage. See http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2018/02/08/16/48FF7CDC00000578-0-image-a-5_1518108011435.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2018/02/08/16/48FF7CDC0000057... for camera positions. To get a picture of both, you'd really need alot more distance away, or to be looking mostly 'down' towards the payload adapter.
- hsnewman 9y agoBy definition a celestial object is a natural object. http://www.yourdictionary.com/celestial-object http://www.yourdictionary.com/celestial-object So how does a Tesla Roadster classify?
- Stratoscope 9y agoYou are correct: by the standard definition, the Roadster is not a celestial object. It was just loose terminology in the tweet. When you look up the Roadster on the HORIZONS database it doesn't call it a celestial object. To see the details, first click the link in the tweet: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi?CGISESSID=c3cbd47fbf603007d1b627107c28962f&s_body=1#top https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi?CGISESSID=c3cbd47fbf60... Then click the Cancel button at the bottom of the page. It should now show SpaceX Roadster for the Target Body, and a Generate Ephemeris button at the bottom. Click that button for details.
- Fjolsvith 9y agoWhat are the laws on space salvage? Just wondering in case I happen across that Roadster someday.
- theandrewbailey 9y agoI'd be more worried about Musk being fined by Space Government.
- xingped 9y agoFinders keepers!
- jonas21 9y ago> A plaque on the attachment fitting between the Falcon Heavy upper stage and the Tesla is etched with the names of more than 6,000 SpaceX employees. That's a pretty unique employee benefit.
- fg8qfg8fg8 9y agoI just wrote my name down on a paper "plaque" and now it's orbiting the Sun too
- Theodores 9y agoAlso underplayed in the media thus far, yet a key feature. I wonder whether this is because the media were not briefed on that? Normally the media just parrot talk press releases so I guess the name plaque was there just for the team and not really for the wider audience. Incidentally, is 'presure' an American version of British English 'pressure'?
- PeanutNore 9y agoIt's 'pressure' here as well, 'presure' would just be a misspelling.
- peterjlee 9y agoHow does one go about telling the DMV that your car is no longer in use because you sent it up to space on a rocket?
- martin_bech 9y agoIm sure they have a form for that.
- erik_seaberg 9y agohttps://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/febfde34-fc2b-415a-bc1c-0d51c7e4fff4/reg102.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/febfde34-fc2b-415a... "The vehicle(s) listed below will not be operated, moved, or left standing (parked) upon any California highway[....]"
- jacquesm 9y agoYou just pray they don't make you bring it back for an inspection.
- dpflan 9y agoSo is this now a silly setup for a "celestial" car chase? :) (e.g. Fast and Furious 1293: Interstellar Edition)
- TeMPOraL 9y ago"Drifting past Ceres" just got a whole new meaning.
- mortenjorck 9y agoThe thing I'm most curious about is how long Earth will be able to get a 30fps 1080p video stream from the vehicle. In a way, it feels like a sort of generally-accessible, high-definition version of a classic NASA probe - we've all seen pictures from space after they've been meticulously stitched together by NASA imaging professionals, but this is the first time anyone in the world can visit a website and get a live, full-frame-rate video stream from the vacuum of space.
- bryananderson 9y agoAll communication ceased about 12 hours after launch. The vehicle has no solar panels, so the battery (presumably not the stock one) depleted. NASA regularly broadcasts live HD video from a comparable distance (ISS). Not so easy to do from deep space.
- clort 9y agoOk, but does this space vehicle have a name?