As always, Matt Levine said it best:

I'm not sure I agree that he "isn't joking": Just because you actually do it, that doesn't mean it's not a joke. (Perhaps it's a "prank.") If you are rich enough, you can joke about sending a car in a rocket to Mars by actually sending a car in a rocket to Mars, which makes it funnier.

(https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-04/bank-back...)

It's very definitely a joke in exactly this way. Or a kind of piece of postmodern art "event", like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qu...

Probably a "kind of piece of postmodern art event" describes it the best.

BTW Maybe we will have a "Burn 1 Million Bitcoin" event in the future with Satoshi Nakamoto himself burning is Bitcoins.

Not a joke. A practical design choice. He didnt want any delays associated with the payload. He didnt want a "failure" should his rocket work but the payload fail. He needed a known object, something that had at least gone through the vibration testing to ensure it didnt damage the rocket on launch. And he likes being rich. So he took the oppertunity to use the launch of one product to promote another. Nothing of this is funny to him. This is business.

Or he just wanted an excuse to go car shopping again.

It's too bad he can't joke about sending a scientific probe to Mars and then doing it.

The point is that first launch has no serious interest to warrant a real payload due to the higher risk of failure. If they weren't doing something fun like this they would just be loading it up with dead weight.

Or a wheel of cheese[0]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_COTS_Demo_Flight_1#Addi...

You could still do something fun and support a bunch of student science projects. They could be thrown together in a hurry, and at low cost. The risk of failure isn't a problem.

You'd probably still need to certify each of these projects to ensure they can handle the vibrations, environment and otherwise wont't interfere with the test. A project with components that rattles loose at max Q and somehow prevents separation is a problem.

You'd also need some kind of deployment system.

I'm also fairly sure Musk has already considered doing this, and reached a conclusion that it wasn't feasible.

Now I wonder at which stage of development a Tesla Roadster got that certification

“We certified the Tesla roadster to space flight loads and dynamics” - Can’t beat that kinda of safety engineering! :)

I'm pretty sure it will be launched as an inert hunk of metal and plastic. Batteries will be removed, fluids drained, etc.

I agree. The vibroacoustics and shock environments in a fairing are intense. He would likely have to rebuild the car from scratch to pass testing. Last thing you want is a wheel vibrating off and bouncing around in the fairing during flight. That could cause big problems with loads and/or controls.

> I'm also fairly sure Musk has already considered doing this, and reached a conclusion that it wasn't feasible.

Do you have evidence of this? Or is it just a hunch...?

The man is head of a successful private space launch company (a phrase which would have sounded oxymoronic just a couple of decades ago) which has achieved some significant firsts. Assuming he’s not a complete idiot in this field should be the default.

I am sure there is no evidence, but is literally the most basic and first assumed thing. The man who brought you reusable rockets didn't forget to think about the most basic thing first.

Is't that machine worth six figures? Has the world gone mad that we can't find a more productive way to have "fun"

It's a first gen roadster, I believe, so it's a decade old. If it's worth six figures, it's for its historical value (and if it's ever retrieved from Mars it'll be worth FAR more in that regard after this stunt).

Has the world gone mad that we’re worrying about the six-figure cost of a dummy payload on the test launch of a nine-figure rocket?

The cost of the second hand Tesla is nothing compared to the PR value of doing this.

That's cheap though, a sattelite that size costs millions if not tens of millions.

Although I guess you could argue this one does too, given that it's not from the production line, probably hand-built.

You are missing the point. The point he is making is that he is actually taken some risk or putting something that is dear to him, in jeopardy.

If the mission is successful, do they recover the car? Or will it be released into orbit? And if that, will it eventually burn up?

Incentive for BFS to do something spectacular on its maiden voyage.

It will orbit the sun for hundreds of millions of years

... Until it is recovered by space pirates and sold as a historic artifact....

Imagine a human like alien civilisation discovering the car. They would be like we found the chariot of God.

Great question.

It doesn't cost them 6 figures.

Potentially did when he built it. Wasn't this the very first fully assembled one ever built?

Getting to an orbit around Mars costs a lot more money and effort, because it requires the payload to have the ability to do course corrections and another orbit insertion burn when it passes very close to Mars. The second stage of the Falcon 9 doesn't have the ability to stay powered and fueled during such a long trip through deep space.

I assume this stunt will just launch a dummy payload into a non-circular orbit around the sun with its distance to the sun varying between sun-earth and sun-mars distance. Like a Hohmann transfer orbit, except that it probably won't get anywhere near Mars and will just stay in that orbit indefinitely.

That post was written 16 days ago.

I think the joke is on reporters like Matt Levine who think that it's some sort of joke or prank. I honestly believe people perceived it as a joke because it is odd or not a normal thing to do just like allowing a stranger to pick you up and take you wherever you want to go.

I really don’t understand what you’re trying to say, except a sort of generalized hate of journalists?

Because Levine very clearly expressed his expectation that Musk would, in fact, put a Tesla on a Falcon.

I also doubt anyone ever thought Uber was a joke. They may have critizised it for a litany of reasons, mostly being vindicated by now. But nobody considered it a literal joke, not at least because it’s missing the funny.

> just like allowing a stranger to pick you up and take you wherever you want to go.

Oh, you mean like a taxi?

That thing inside Elon, that thing that whispered in his ear and pulled at his heart that drove him to build Tesla, SpaceX; those same exact neurons, or that karmic energy, or spirit, or demon; that insatiable lust and yearning, the ego and hubris to believe it could all even be possible; the fuck-all attitude which gave him the courage to try...

[The Greeks called it “Ate” (pronounced ay-tee) ~ the point between Hubris and Nemesis.]

The swirling vortex which is Elon had no choice but to strap his black cherry red Roadster onto the biggest rocket we’ve seen in a generation, and on its inaugural flight, send it to fucking Mars.

God speed Elon.

This is a juvenile BS move that will infest another planet...one that humans have never walked on...with this rich kids car.

With a rich kids car.

I think it's just a hohmann transfer to Mars to test the booster, but they're not actually crashing the car on there.

First car on another planet. (yes i know we put a buggy on the moon, but that's not a planet)

Nuclear Weapons on another planet.

I'd rather see the car get there first.

Which planet is that? This will either explode on launch or orbit the sun for a billion years before burning up

Lots of love for the rich kid on this site.

The original link (to imgur.com) is dead, but this seems real: https://www.teslarati.com/image-elon-musk-tesla-roadster-spa...

Link is dead

It's a fake.