SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launches today!

[FlyTexas]

Elon Musk has stated...“Just bear in mind that there is a good chance this monster rocket blows up, so I wouldn’t put anything of irreplaceable sentimental value on it.” Elon's very own 2008 Tesla Roadster is the payload for this flight. The Tesla's ultimate destination is Mars orbit.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/falc ... ary-2018-1

Brian

[FlyTexas]

The Tesla Roadster is on its way to Mars! Unbelievable!!! Here's a screenie I took of the launch.



Brian

[Paul K]

Apparently, the car has David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' playing in the CD player. Got to hand it to Elon Musk - he doesn't give a damn about taking financial risks.

[DaveG]

Very impressive. The two booster rockets touched down pretty much simultaneously. Hope the rest of the mission goes as planned.
Noticed the car had a "Don't Panic" sign on the dash.

[Paul K]

Have a watch. As Dave says, the two boosters touched down together, right at the end of the video. Incredible !

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42969020

[FlyTexas]

Here's a link to watch a live video feed from the Tesla Roadster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6M

Here's a screenie I just took from the video feed. Unreal!


...and another.


Brian

[Airspeed]

Yes, that's a news item alright!
Surprised to hear that they usually launch concrete and scrap metal on test flights.
I thought that we had more than enough junk up there already.

[nigelb]

Wow!

Nigel²

[Chris Trott]

Very impressive. The two booster rockets touched down pretty much simultaneously. Hope the rest of the mission goes as planned.
Noticed the car had a "Don't Panic" sign on the dash.

Unfortunately, the core didn't fare so well. Apparently during the landing burn there was a failure of the outer engines to fire which resulted in the rocket ending up not slowing sufficiently and the trajectory being off, resulting in an impact approx. 100 meters from the barge at a speed in excess of 500 km/h. Hopefully they'll have data on what happened to cause the failure, but I'm not sure how useful it'll be as starting with in April, they're going to be on the Falcon 9 "Block 5" which has some structural and mechanical modifications that changes a lot of systems.

[Kevin Farnell]

Noticed the car had a "Don't Panic" sign on the dash.

Surely, a reference to 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy', by the late Douglas Adams.

Kevin