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This 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 thi

This 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 ago
Yeah 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 ago
  That still definitely sets the record for most miles traveled by an automobile.
  - bmcusick 9y ago
    And 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 ago
Wikipedia 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.
Robotbeat 9y ago
His post was a mistake, and it contained contradictory information. The tweet states a c3 of 12km^2/s^2, but the trajectory shows much greater than that. The actual trajectory does fit the c3 in his tweet. It clearly wasn't intentional on Elon's part (why would you intentionally post a false trajectory with contradictory information when the real trajectory will soon be found observationally by 3rd parties? that'd just make you look bad). A technical error was obviously made somewhere. So it's not fair to call it an exaggeration. Just a technical mistake. Call him out for jumping the gun and not verifying first, perhaps.

dtparr 9y ago

Yeah 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 ago
That still definitely sets the record for most miles traveled by an automobile.
- bmcusick 9y ago
  And 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 ago

Wikipedia 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.

Robotbeat 9y ago

His post was a mistake, and it contained contradictory information. The tweet states a c3 of 12km^2/s^2, but the trajectory shows much greater than that. The actual trajectory does fit the c3 in his tweet. It clearly wasn't intentional on Elon's part (why would you intentionally post a false trajectory with contradictory information when the real trajectory will soon be found observationally by 3rd parties? that'd just make you look bad). A technical error was obviously made somewhere. So it's not fair to call it an exaggeration. Just a technical mistake. Call him out for jumping the gun and not verifying first, perhaps.