Chit Chat
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06 Feb 18
18:59
Joined:
Date Joined:
05 Apr 06
Launch Time : 8.45pm.
Watch here : http://www.spacex.com/webcast
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42950957
Elon Musk will attempt to fly the world's most powerful rocket later with his own sports car on the top.
The US entrepreneur's Falcon Heavy launcher is designed to have twice the lifting capacity of any other vehicle.
But because of the historic high failure rate of maiden flights, only a dummy payload is being risked.
Mr Musk has decided this should be his old cherry-red Tesla roadster with a space-suited mannequin strapped in the driver's seat.
David Bowie's classic hit Space Oddity will be looping on the radio as the car is hurled into an elliptical orbit that stretches out to Mars' orbit around the Sun.
"[The roadster will] get about 400 million km away from Earth, and it'll be doing 11km/s," he told reporters in a briefing on Monday. "We estimate it will be in that orbit for several hundred million years, maybe in excess of a billion years."
Three cameras attached to the car would provide "epic views", Mr Musk added.
The Falcon Heavy will go up from the Kennedy Space Center
Thousands of spectators are expected to descend on Florida's Kennedy Space Center to witness the ascent, which could occur as early as 13:30 EST (18:30 GMT).
Mr Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, has given itself three hours to get the vehicle up on Tuesday. If technical glitches lead to a postponement, a second attempt will be made on Wednesday.
The Falcon Heavy is essentially three of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 vehicles strapped together. But the triple-booster configuration has demanded a number of specific alterations, including a strengthening of the central core booster.
The 27 Merlin engines at the base of the rocket should be capable of generating almost 23,000 kilonewtons of thrust - slightly more than double that of the world's current most powerful rocket, the Delta IV Heavy, which is operated by US competitor United Launch Alliance.
Watch here : http://www.spacex.com/webcast
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42950957
Elon Musk will attempt to fly the world's most powerful rocket later with his own sports car on the top.
The US entrepreneur's Falcon Heavy launcher is designed to have twice the lifting capacity of any other vehicle.
But because of the historic high failure rate of maiden flights, only a dummy payload is being risked.
Mr Musk has decided this should be his old cherry-red Tesla roadster with a space-suited mannequin strapped in the driver's seat.
David Bowie's classic hit Space Oddity will be looping on the radio as the car is hurled into an elliptical orbit that stretches out to Mars' orbit around the Sun.
"[The roadster will] get about 400 million km away from Earth, and it'll be doing 11km/s," he told reporters in a briefing on Monday. "We estimate it will be in that orbit for several hundred million years, maybe in excess of a billion years."
Three cameras attached to the car would provide "epic views", Mr Musk added.
The Falcon Heavy will go up from the Kennedy Space Center
Thousands of spectators are expected to descend on Florida's Kennedy Space Center to witness the ascent, which could occur as early as 13:30 EST (18:30 GMT).
Mr Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, has given itself three hours to get the vehicle up on Tuesday. If technical glitches lead to a postponement, a second attempt will be made on Wednesday.
The Falcon Heavy is essentially three of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 vehicles strapped together. But the triple-booster configuration has demanded a number of specific alterations, including a strengthening of the central core booster.
The 27 Merlin engines at the base of the rocket should be capable of generating almost 23,000 kilonewtons of thrust - slightly more than double that of the world's current most powerful rocket, the Delta IV Heavy, which is operated by US competitor United Launch Alliance.
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Replies: 22
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5 min warning !
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12 mins ....correction
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Launched 4 mins back.....can wind back to launch
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Musk is in the car.
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Stunning stuff, ta.
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The side booster landings v impressive
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That was so exciting!
Thank you so much for posting this, Leopard. Mr. Makybe is a huge fan of Elon Musk. Somehow he thought this was tomorrow  Great live pictures on the website. Has the third booster landed on the ship? Twitter hasn't updated yet. Thanks again, Leopard  |
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They say they lost the Centre Core here at 38:35 ....unfortunately
. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B_tWbjFIGI |
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That's a shame. Thanks, Leopard.
Live views of Starman . https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=aBr2kKAHN6M I like to think that David Bowie would have loved this |
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For me by far the most impressive and exciting part of this was the landing of those two pods virtually simultaneously. That was a real game changer for space flight.
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One of the finest things I've ever seen. Amazing camerawork. Yet here on earth we still have to endure a 7 second delay to live racing pics.
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What happened to Centre Core :
The third booster was due to settle on a drone ship stationed several hundred kilometres out at sea. Unfortunately, it was unable to slow its descent by re-igniting sufficient engines, missed the target vessel and was destroyed as it hit the water at some 500km/h. 'Slight hiccup', Elon Musk admitted SpaceX overshot the Falcon Heavy's third booster burn, sending Starman further into the solar system than was originally planned. The new orbit will send the Roadster on a journey into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. |
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Richard Branson must be seething,he was promising to launch into space as early as 2012 and took early payments from many to subsidise his development while he maximised his own publicity only to be beaten by Elon Musk.
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I cant get over how Falcon Heavy's side boosters landed so easily, are their any other images of their route to the ground ?
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The question is, does the gain produced by egregiously rich individuals committing to pet projects outweight the collective impact of individuals attaining such wealth from the economy in the first place?
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The public funded space programmes of half a century are nowhere near close to being bettered by these rich parties.
So which is 'best'? Most if not all scientific advance is funded directly or encouraged with tax revenues in support payments. The private sector does very little for the collective good without them creating margins for themselves to profit. |
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.
http://thechive.com/2018/02/07/guy-gets-amateur-footage-of-the-falcon-heavy-boosters-landing-video/ |
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Let's not forget about all the fish killed when the rogue core hit the sea at 500 kph.....10,000 fish ?
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*500km/h
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dusty,when I was reading about Branson's attempt to fly into space I believe that NASA/US government were actively encouraging private operators with a view to reducing the public sector costs of space exploration and then frequent space travel.There was a big grant to ecnourage competition that Musk appears to have won now.
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Which is a continuation of small state mentality which encourages private sector with cash prizes who then own the IP rights and control the direction of the technology.
The microchip was a similar public/private initiative which gave money to TI that ended up with companies like Microsoft and apple dictating the agenda for a generation and became behemoths that are too influential for governments to properly regulate. NASA shut down the Apollo programme, so private companies probably will take over development of the sector of taking humans into space. I can’t see that as a good thing, when the only way to get into space is by relying on for profit companies. There’s a loosening of health and safety to encourage the private sector to do just that. That just doesn’t sound healthy to me, especially as private built transportation vehicles only have to have something like a 1 in 280 probability of death to be allowed. Private companies won’t get anywhere close to getting humans on to mars imo, they can barely even restock the ISS twice in a row with out everything exploding on the launchpad. |
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Lol, perhaps this belongs in the Twilight Zone fred?
https://www.rt.com/usa/418097-musk-mars-conspiracy-murder/ |