Tesla Roadster actually Launched to Mars.. No kidd

Originally Posted By: IndyIan
I wonder if Musk couldn't have put something of more scientific use up there? I'd assume NASA or the ESA could whip up a cheap heavy tech 3000+lb telescope to take pictures or something as it traveled around.
Anyways, its good that whole thing worked pretty well. Little steps like this are necessary to get us into a spacefaring species.


keep in mind folks, this was just the first test launch for a new configuration of his Rockets. don't want to put anything Too valuable on one of those, incase, you know things go wrong, and BOOM!

also musk has a history of silly payloads for first test launches.
the First Falcon 9 test had a Massive Wheel of French Cheese on board, as suggested by a friend of his, as a nod to Monty Python's "Cheese Shop" Sketch...
 
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/169837...-elon-musk-mars

It missed the intended orbit, where it was supposed to return to a near-Earth pass.
Too much rocket thrust and/or too much time burning.
I'm not sure what went wrong. Its not that hard to burn the rocket and shut it off when the desired change in speed is obtained.
You also have to know where the Tesla is and how fast its already going, which is measured well.
 
Originally Posted By: earlyre
Originally Posted By: Vern_in_IL
They didn't play Rocket Man due to copyright...

the plan was never for Rocket Man. it was supposed to be Bowie's Space Oddity playing over the car's stereo.

Sound doesn't happen in the vacuum of space. Sound is air vibrations.
Plus, why would you want to spend your solar panel power on speaker vibrations when you have cameras to power?
I guesss it was another joke to say it was playing anything, and copyright issues are silly in this context.

I don't seem to be getting a live video stream anymore since I can still see the earth. Camera down? Or just not enough time gone by to leave Earth's view.
 
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Originally Posted By: HemiHawk
Did anyone see the 2 boosters land? IN UNISON? pretty amazing stuff.


The unison aspect of it was pretty amazing. Timed perfectly. How does that happen over a long fall and burn?
 
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Originally Posted By: oil_film_movies
Originally Posted By: HemiHawk
Did anyone see the 2 boosters land? IN UNISON? pretty amazing stuff.


The unison aspect of it was pretty amazing. Timed perfectly. How does that happen over a long fall and burn?


I had a little trouble there with the video link setting it to 19 seconds in... I finally got the video up. So its here twice but its worth seeing twice!

I think the center rocket failed to land as gracefully... but 2 out of three isn't bad! The implications of this test are awesome... send up a heavy load, and have the rockets land themselves to be used again.
 
Boosters landing upright is new. Very cool, but risky of course. I wonder how much of the rocket motor they can re-use withought expensive total disassembly, blueprinting, and re-assembly? Re-usable my rear-end....
I'm wondering if its not better to just strap on expendable side rocket solid boosters to avoid rehab & get heavy lift that way.

The entire set-up using liquid oxygen (cryogenic) with kerosene (RP-1) is not new at all. They are using 1950's technology. For lower risk to be sure.
I knew a fellow that actually worked on one of the early O2/RP-1 fueled rockets, the Titan 1, and he had some interesting stories from 1959 getting it all to work. About 60 years ago, young dudes!

Liquid H2 fuel is really better, very light and fluffy compared to RP-1 kerosene, but more difficult to handle & quite dangerous.
Side note: RP-1 similar to kerosene, jet fuel, and diesel, BTW.
 
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
I wonder if Musk couldn't have put something of more scientific use up there? I'd assume NASA or the ESA could whip up a cheap heavy tech 3000+lb telescope to take pictures or something as it traveled around.
Anyways, its good that whole thing worked pretty well. Little steps like this are necessary to get us into a spacefaring species.


This was a test. Musk only gave it a 50% chance of actually succeeding in getting the test payload up.

Wouldn't have made sense to spend a ton of money on putting mucho-expensive scientific instruments on it when it's not proven.
 
Originally Posted By: oil_film_movies
The unison aspect of it was pretty amazing. Timed perfectly. How does that happen over a long fall and burn?


What was the quote ?

paraphrasing "the fact that it looks fake is what proves that it's real"

For those that say it's a legit "coulda sent a concrete block"

a) Look over there a bunny, don't look at the books and the failed promises. It's a Tesla in space
b) appears to have been nearly zero effort to achieve the actually stated goal of sending it to Mars (even "just for fun")...just had a rocket on it pointing in roughly int he right direction to move it somewhere fast.
 
Originally Posted By: oil_film_movies
Boosters landing upright is new. Very cool, but risky of course. I wonder how much of the rocket motor they can re-use withought expensive total disassembly, blueprinting, and re-assembly?


They've re-fired the recovered stages a lot. Heck, they fire the engines at least a couple of times before they launch them in the first place, and at least three times during the launch (well, unless something goes wrong, like the centre core this time).

Supposedly the reason they're throwing away many of the first stages in current launches is that they're about to start using their new design which has been updated based on the things they've learned from the recovered stages in order to make them much easier to reuse. So the old ones will never fly again once those are available; they're more valuable for testing more efficient re-entry and landing trajectories that may destroy them.

Quote:
I'm wondering if its not better to just strap on expendable side rocket solid boosters to avoid rehab & get heavy lift that way.


SRBs are expensive and untestable. SpaceX doesn't even use explosive bolts, because they can't be tested.

Quote:
Liquid H2 fuel is really better, very light and fluffy compared to RP-1 kerosene, but more difficult to handle & quite dangerous.
Side note: RP-1 similar to kerosene, jet fuel, and diesel, BTW.


No, it's not. For upper stages, perhaps, but LH2 is far less dense, so requires much larger tanks. It also makes metal brittle, so it's not ideal for a reusable rocket: if I remember correctly, that's one reason the space shuttle engines had to be torn down and inspected after a launch.

For big rockets it's a really bad idea. There's a reason the Saturn V first stage used kerosene when the rest of the rocket used hydrogen.
 
Originally Posted By: oil_film_movies

I'm wondering if its not better to just strap on expendable side rocket solid boosters to avoid rehab & get heavy lift that way.


Solid rockets have lower Isp (specific impulse) than most (all?) modern liquid fueled rocket engines. The shuttle SRB's had a Isp of 242 seconds (higher is better) and the Shuttle main engines had an Isp of 366 to 452 seconds (sea level or vacuum)

Solids on the shuttle were not simple. They each had a complex APU for power, a hydraulic system, parachutes, electronics and a hydraulically controlled nozzle.
 
"Reusable" boosters and launch vehicles are a financial joke. That's what the whole concept of the Space Shuttle was built around, and sold to Congress as. So called "cheap", reusable boosters and main engines that could be overhauled and reused. It ended up to be the most expensive low Earth orbital launch platform in NASA's history. Based on a cost per pound of payload, over it's entire 30 year, and 135 flight service life.
 
Originally Posted By: billt460
"Reusable" boosters and launch vehicles are a financial joke. That's what the whole concept of the Space Shuttle was built around, and sold to Congress as. So called "cheap", reusable boosters and main engines that could be overhauled and reused. It ended up to be the most expensive low Earth orbital launch platform in NASA's history. Based on a cost per pound of payload, over it's entire 30 year, and 135 flight service life.

WOW. I had no idea, and Musk is still following this reusable concept.
 
Originally Posted By: cjcride
WOW. I had no idea, and Musk is still following this reusable concept.


Because reusable is only expensive when you don't have customers to please.

Solid rocket booster reusability was a joke, because 99% of the cost of the booster is the fuel inside, not the tin can it's put in, so they cost more to recover and refurbish than to just replace. And the space shuttle engines were designed for efficiency, not cost, which is silly when liquid fuel is typically the smallest part of the cost of a rocket launch.

If I remember correctly, a single space shuttle main engine cost about as much as an entire Falcon-9 first stage. And initially required an overhaul after every flight: I think they were up to 2-3 flights between overhauls by the end of the program, unless the emergency power level was used (109% of the rated thrust).

Yet, despite the fact that the space shuttle was not designed to minimize cost, people still use it to argue that reusability does not reduce costs. SpaceX have said that the work to refurbish the first reused booster was significantly less than half the cost of building a new one, and that was after they spent months tearing everything down to ensure there'd be no problems the next time it launched.

Edit: which is actually another reason reusability can make you money. When you get the stage back and tear it down, you can figure out which parts are overengineered and which are underengineered, and improve the design to reduce cost and/or increase reliability. Both of which lead to higher profits.
 
Space-X has a long way to go to achieving NASA's overall record of success. When the Shuttle Program was brought on line, NASA said that a total loss of payload, vehicle, and crew every 50 missions, was more than an acceptable rate of failure. They exceeded that with only 2 failures in over 135 missions.

Space-X is still very much in it's early stages. And they've had quite a few major failures already. Just as NASA did in it's early years. But NASA wasn't required to turn a profit in order to stay in business. Space-X is. So it still remains to be seen if they can keep the whole thing in the black over time. Where would Tesla, Space-X, and Solar City be today without the $4.9 BILLION they received in government funding? That flowing spigot of free government cash isn't going to last forever.

Musk is a flamboyant guy, and can no doubt put on a good show..... With a lot of government money. I'm not trying to take anything away from him. But his space program, along with his electric cars, still have a long way to go to prove they are financially viable enough to compete in an open market over time.
 
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