Hey Blogs,
I have been interested in space technology for many years now. And we are living in fast changing times with the private space sector generating most of this change. Well it’s just been announced that the long delayed first launch of the Falcon heavy (FH) rocket will be carrying a Tesla Roadster car as its payload. Why is this? Well I think it’s due to 3 reasons.
The risk factor. It will be the first time that the Falcon Heavy rocket has ever taken to the skies and so it is met will very high risk. It would be crazy to put a billion dollar payload on top of a rocket for its first initial fight with so many unknowns about its performance. Even just test firing a rocket days before the actual launch can be very risky, note the Falcon 9 explosion on 23/09/2016 which destroyed a billion dollar satellite and caused major damage to the launch pad which is still un-operational and being repaired to this very date. The Falcon Heavy rocket is essentially 3 Falcon 9 rockets strapped together to make 1 big triple core rocket. Even though this seems quite straight forward just getting 3 rockets and strapping them all together to make one big one it has been met with many technical difficulties hence the long delays in getting this rocket flying. So if it does explode (which it probably will) what’s the worst that can happen? The car is going to be completely destroyed costing around $100,000 (which is obviously better than destroying a billion dollar satellite) or even worst the launch pad (39A) is destroyed which is where the Saturn 5 rockets launched humans to the moon. Not only would this be tragic as launch pad 39A holds such great historical significance launch pad 39A is the only launch pad in the world that is capable of launching the Falcon heavy. So if the launch pad 39A is destroyed SpaceX has now lost all capability to launch the Falcon Heavy Rocket from anywhere in the world for a very long time until they can repair the launch pad or build a new one.
No government officials interfering with their projects. As you would all know by now SpaceX is a private company and for that reason they can put really whatever they like or want on to their rockets without any government officials interfering. Can you remember the first launch of their dragon capsule a few years back which orbited the Earth? It carried a giant lump of cheese in the nosecone, I can’t imagine any government run organisation ever launching something as “silly” as a lump of cheese or a car in to space. There would be public up roar that their tax paying money is being spent in this way, the public want to have good scientific return for their money.
It’s a huge publicity stunt. As far as I can see SpaceX are just trying to generate public enthusiasm and get people excited about traveling into space once more or going to Mars. Remember Elon Musk (The founder of SpaceX) originally in his early days intended to buy a Russian ICBM launcher. He actually went to Russia and inquired about buying one “without the war headed on top of course he jokes”. The idea was to launch the ICBM to Mars carrying with it a small green house garden as the pay load. But this never happened because the cost of getting anything into just low Earth orbit was incredibly expensive. Getting a greenhouse to Mars was never going to happen with current space technology at the time and so SpaceX was founded with the goal of bring the cost of access to space down.
This brand of car is going to Mars!
Currently the Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled to launch in early Jan 2018 with no set date as of yet, after so much delay and if all goes well and the rocket does launch the Tesla where is this Tesla Roadster actually going to go? It’s headed to Mars.
Yup Mars, there is still only leaked news around this upcoming event but I’m guessing that SpaceX does not literally mean that the Roadster is going to land on the surface of Mars it would be very irresponsible if the company is going to go ahead with that idea (don’t worry they won’t) because it would contaminate the planet with Earth bacteria (not great for the scientist looking for life on Mars), it would also need to be fitted out with heat shields for re-entry to get to Mars surface, and it would be just plain stupid for very little scientific return and a huge waste of money. Well-done we just put a car on the surface of Mars great now what do we do now??
Putting the roadster around Mars orbit would also be classed as irresponsible there are currently other countries operating their space probes around Mars (ESA, NASA, ISRO) which are actively collecting data from the red planet. I really don’t think that they would be too happy with a car in Mars orbit going around the planet doing absolutely nothing and being a potential piece of space junk which could impact one of their probes putting it out of permanent action.
I think that the most likely and logical approach would be to still launch the Roadster towards Mars (A great publicity stunt) but send it past Mars at high speed so that it is not captured by Mars gravitational field and so it does not go into and around Mars orbit.
And lastly what modifications would the car need? It’s no use in just launching a car going past Mars at high speed without any HD cameras fitted to it the public are going to want to see pictures. I would think and suspect that it would be jam packed with HD cameras pointing in every direction, solar arrays for power generation and radio transmitters. Sorry no HD videos will be transmitted back and this no fault of SpaceX blame simple physics, Mars is so far away from Earth that using radio waves to send back HD videos will not carry enough bandwidth so HD videos are out of the question.
So yes good luck to SpaceX and their new Falcon Heavy rocket for next year, sorry I am a bit sceptical whether or not it’s going to work first time but even if it does not work and the rocket explodes I'm sure that SpaceX will learn from it collect the data that they need and try again, only with a different car.
Rob