Photo: Tesla via Teslarati
It's official. Sort of. Elon's Musk Falcon Heavy now has an official launch date, and that is February 6th. Or 7th, as a back-up, as Chris Gerbhardt from NASASpaceflight.com tweeted on Friday. Onboard, to serve as a test payload, if you like, is the world's first car to send into space: a Tesla Roadster that belongs to Musk.
"Aiming for first flight of Falcon Heavy on Feb. 6 from Apollo launchpad 39A at Cape Kennedy," said Musk in a tweet. "Easy viewing from the public causeway."
The Falcon Heavy will aim to reach Mars, cruising to the tunes of David Bowie's “Space Oddity” that will reverberate from inside the Roadster for as long as the batteries keep up.
When the first humans reach the Red Planet's orbit, they will find the Roadster spinning around the planet, playing the same song over and over again. And it will stay there “on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit,” probably becoming a shrine of some sorts for future Mars colonists.
Musk says he has chosen his Tesla as payload because using concrete and such would be boring. Carrying the Roadster will be an easy task for what SpaceX calls “the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two.”
“Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring,” Musk said last December. “Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel.”
The Falcon Heavy is designed to deliver large payloads to orbit inside a composite fairing. The first stage of the rocket is made up of of three Falcon 9 cores that are supposed to return to Earth after launch.
Shortly after it would have proven its worth, it will be used to propel the Dragon spacecraft, the first commercial spacecraft in history to carry cargo to the International Space Station, back in 2012.
The Falcon Heavy will aim to reach Mars, cruising to the tunes of David Bowie's “Space Oddity” that will reverberate from inside the Roadster for as long as the batteries keep up.
When the first humans reach the Red Planet's orbit, they will find the Roadster spinning around the planet, playing the same song over and over again. And it will stay there “on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit,” probably becoming a shrine of some sorts for future Mars colonists.
Musk says he has chosen his Tesla as payload because using concrete and such would be boring. Carrying the Roadster will be an easy task for what SpaceX calls “the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two.”
“Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring,” Musk said last December. “Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel.”
The Falcon Heavy is designed to deliver large payloads to orbit inside a composite fairing. The first stage of the rocket is made up of of three Falcon 9 cores that are supposed to return to Earth after launch.
Shortly after it would have proven its worth, it will be used to propel the Dragon spacecraft, the first commercial spacecraft in history to carry cargo to the International Space Station, back in 2012.
Google News