Wait, wait wait. If they aren't putting the Tesla into actual orbit, then what about--50 years from now--when they run into a situation on Mars Base Alpha where the only possible solution to an imminent cascading system failure is to dock with the orbiting Roadster and harvest a crucial part from the drivetrain in order to repair their reactor and save the base?!

> Following launch, Falcon Heavy’s second stage will attempt to place the Roadster into a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun.

That's not Mars orbit. It's an orbit around the sun with perihelion ~1AU (distance the Earth orbits) and aphelion ~1.5AU (distance Mars orbits [avg]).

So basically they're just throwing a car into space.

Into deep space. This will be SpaceX's first flight beyond Earth orbit.

It will be the first commercial space flight beyond Earth orbit

iirc, they are aiming for Mar's orbit... the general public just thinks that means orbiting Mars.

Yes.