Elon Musk to launch his Tesla Roadster to Mars, blasting David Bowie's "Space Oddity"

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

Has he got any sense of wonder and sentiment? Jeez.You send vintage Buicks, Corvettes or Rolls Royces into space. Classic cars. Icons.

He can send the Tesla Roadster as soon as a real pre-70s legend has been dispatched to Mars.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
Has he got any sense of wonder and sentiment? Jeez.You send vintage Buicks, Corvettes or Rolls Royces into space. Classic cars. Icons.

Plymouth Satellite? Mercury Comet?

a reply to: Kandinsky

Well to be fair, Space Oddity is from 1969

But I totally agree with you, a vintage classic would have been even more bad-ass.

originally posted by: LightSpeedDriver
a reply to: scraedtosleep

Frivolous? How does going to a dead, dry and barren planet contribute anything to the humans here on Earth? There might be a little frozen water somewhere, according to some but I doubt it will be enough to sustain "life" in any real numbers. Without light-speed travel or better, we ain't realistically going anywhere.

Yes, we are. We're going to Mars to establish ourselves there as self-supporting. Or would you rather wait for a comet strike? I guess that scenario would actually NOT benefit humans on Earth; it would just benefit humans on Mars and save the species in the process. Realistically we ARE going there. As for light speed and all that? Guess we'll have to figure it out. The only real certainty is that WE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE! First: Off Earth. Second: Out of the Solar system. Otherwise, we die. If people don't care to participate in that, I have no problem. Just stay out of the way.

a reply to: schuyler

Let's summarise....

You want to go to a planet with no air, little to no water and no magnetosphere to speak of in the hopes of expanding the resilience and range of the human race for generations to come while we can't even "manage" our own planet without squabbling? Good luck with that!

I know, T and C's and all but have you been taking drugs?

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

Why does the payload have to be useless garbage and not something already preparing colonisation like a com-satellite?

Might motivate someone to sign up as a first wave colonist if they can get there and drive around in style

originally posted by: LightSpeedDriver
a reply to: schuyler

Let's summarise....

You want to go to a planet with no air, little to no water and no magnetosphere to speak of in the hopes of expanding the resilience and range of the human race for generations to come while we can't even "manage" our own planet without squabbling? Good luck with that!

I know, T and C's and all but have you been taking drugs?

Sounds like a fun challenge...not to mention taking part in history at its very core as being the first people to start the terraforming and building process.

I think you could very easily get a few hundred people to willingly go, knowing its a one way trip, lots of hard work, no immediately luxuries to start, etc...simply because it is taking part in something great

originally posted by: LightSpeedDriver
Methinks the late Mr. Tesla would be turning in his grave about now...

If anybody could appreciate a ridiculous grandstanding publicity stunt, it would be Nikola Tesla.

Aliens will find the car, replicate it. Find aplanet and have some fun.

originally posted by: YouSir

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

Why does the payload have to be useless garbage and not something already preparing colonisation like a com-satellite?

Ummm...with a payload capacity of 119,000 lbs...maybe they'll squeeze a 3-D printer or two onboard that could begin printing the base out of that red oxide dust...a couple small reactors wouldn't hurt either...

IMO it would make sense to send the load heavy in order to fully test the systems...

YouSir

You'd have to get the 3D printers to the surface somehow if they were to use the soil for printing material, and I don't think SpaceX has yet developed the equipment needed to conduct a successful landing.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

Has he got any sense of wonder and sentiment? Jeez.You send vintage Buicks, Corvettes or Rolls Royces into space. Classic cars. Icons.

Does anyone remember the opening sequence to the 1981 film Heavy Metal? :

originally posted by: LightSpeedDriver
a reply to: schuyler

Let's summarise....

You want to go to a planet with no air, little to no water and no magnetosphere to speak of in the hopes of expanding the resilience and range of the human race for generations to come while we can't even "manage" our own planet without squabbling? Good luck with that!

I know, T and C's and all but have you been taking drugs?

Jesus, get over yourself. You sound like some Nervous Nellie worried that if you set sail over the ocean you're going to fall off because the Earth is flat. You are showing a complete lack of imagination. Stay here. You lack the talent to do anything else.

a reply to: schuyler

Fellow member, I am as far removed from Nervous Nellie (whoever she is) as you could imagine. Your attempt to compare me to a flat-earther I found nothing less than humorous and heart-warming. Truly, and thank you!

However.

Your postulation that I lack imagination presents me with a problem. How do I survive this untrue allegation? How do I look other members in the eye again while wearing my tie-dye mankini with any kind of dignity? Should I delete my account, cut my own throat or just go and hide outside for a while until everything will be ok again?

I really hope you can advise me as to the best course of my next action.

Eagerly awaiting your reply,

Driver

/sarcasm on

I can tell you--not that you will listen. Basically, you look at something that is difficult and deem it impossible. I look at something that is difficult and consider it a challenge. I like my attitude better than yours. I have no problem if you want to stay on shore and bite your fingernails as the ships sail off to certain death by falling off the edge of the world. You can be as belligerently myopic as you wish, but your attempt at "sarcasm" is foolish and silly. That you deem it necessary to point out that is what you are attempting is laughable. It just shows your own lack of vision. You can be dismissed as irrelevant. Your only real use is to be able to point to you and say, "That attitude is stupid and unhelpful." But to others I say this:

We must get over the dependence of being a one-world species. The reason is that an extinction-level event is an eventual certainty. For all practical purposes, i.e.: From what we know now, that means Mars, though there are other candidates out there. Mars is not desolate. It has water. It has the raw material for fuel. It has the capacity to support life once we install it. There is no doubt that we can establish a self-supporting presence on Mars. We can make oxygen. We can make heat. We can make fuel. We can make food. It also can be terra-formed, and that means life can get easier over time. There is a wealth of material supporting this idea. A you have to do is look. This is not a novel idea and a lot of very smart people have thought long and hard about it.

Obviously Mars is really not enough to save the species. Any number of things could cause a problem for the entire solar system. The ultimate goal is to find another solar system with an Earth-like planet. What do you think we've been doing these last few years? A whole lot of resources and time has been put into finding so-called exo-planets--with particular emphasis on Earth-like planets in a "habitable zone." Anybody think that's an accident? Of course not. We're looking for another home. How are we going to get there? Well you know what? I don't know. But I do know that the popular culture version "You can't go faster than light" is a gross simplification and conveniently ignores some pretty compelling evidence to the contrary: Quantum entanglement, for example. If you can get beyond the typical "Carl Sagan talks to English majors about science" kinds of presentations you will find the physicists at the cutting edge of research have some startling thoughts about this "light speed" problem. There are people who seem to feel we've "got it all down" about reality these days, but the same attitude could be seen in the latter art of the 19th century when the same was said about Newtonian Mechanics. Then people thought it was just about filling in the edges a bit before complete knowledge was known. The Universe was a giant clock. The clock maker as gone, and that was pretty much it.

But that didn't happen, did it? It turns out quantum mechanics and relativity had something to teach us where Newtoian mechanics did not have a clue. I'm betting we are in a similar situation today. We've been butting our heads against the wall and coming to the conclusion that walls are impenetrable. But what if we just haven't found the door? That gives me some hope that we can find a way out of here. I don't think that is an unreasonable attitude to take. And though it's perfectly okay to lack vision, I have no respect whatsoever for the belligerent idiots who think things are impossible. I have nothing but disdain and revulsion against that way of thinking.

a reply to: schuyler

I read all replies. This one was harder to find because you did not reply to me.

First, drop the assumptions, with all due respect. You do not know me so cannot assume as to whether I listen or not or how I think.

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things breakfast!"

An extinction level event might also be called a statistical probability but, it also needs a scale. We all know this planet will eventually become uninhabitable if only for the fact that our star will eventually go super-nova but that does not mean we should throw good money after bad money in a hasty attempt to leave now that will be fraught with nothing but difficulties due to our current lack of technology that is not suited to solve the problems at hand.

I have no idea how long mankind has been on this planet but I would posit that we do not need to go anywhere in the forseeable future. Our only danger at the moment is the one we create for ourselves in this greed-driven world.

Exo-planets are faster-than-light-speed distances away. The only place we can invent a solution to that problem is down here on Earth, if it is at all possible. (Or we know that ET technology is laying idle on another planet close-by which we can fathom?) On that I think we can both agree. I personally suspect that FTL travel is not what we will eventually discover/invent, but rather a space-time bending/manipulation device or a Wormhole type thing but that is pure speculation on my part. I always liked the Star-Trek way of beam me up Scotty but I think that had a limited range in the series.

I'm all for science, but not just for the sake of "it", profits, the "We did it first!" motive or anything else except tried and trusted science that works everytime. And yes, I realise things need to be tested but a one way trip to Mars won't help Jack. It makes for good headlines though.

Belligerant idiots? Well, I stated an opinion based on our current state and short-term goals designed to generate nothing but work and profit for the agencies involved. Elon Musk is a tool that knows his finance and business. If a billionaire wannabe is the future, I'll pass.

Until we solve our very human problems here, of which there are many, venturing into space might be a huge mistake.

a reply to: LightSpeedDriver

The sun will not go "super nova". It's mass is much too small for it to do so.

However, it is getting hotter each year. A very small amount, but enough so that when you add the years up, in about 500 million years, the sun will be hot enough that liquid water can't exist on the surface of the Earth.

Then another 4.5 billion years after that, the sun will have expanded into a red giant and will either consume the Earth, or the Earth will be so close to it that it will be a burnt cinder without an atmosphere..



A good chunk of the technology that people enjoy to day can find some of their roots in R&D for space travel, space flight, and space exploration.

Getting off of our planet should be a major priority: The universe is trying to kill us.

You've heard the "eggs all in one basket" saying, and nothing is more true that life on our planet. I'm including ALL life on our planet. There are a LOT of things out there in the universe that could snuff out all life here.

Heck, we don't even need something from outer space to do it. The Earth itself tried to kill off all life about 250 million years ago, the Permian Triassic wiped out something like 96% of life on Earth, and so far all the smoking guns for it show that it was natural causes right here on our own planet.

Right now we have the tech to actually get out into space and live there. Doesn't have to be a colonized planet that we try to terraform either. Orbital habitats are the way to go. We can place them all around orbiting the sun, collecting energy, and providing living room for not just people, but all life: plants, animals, insects, you name it.

Waiting until we solve all our problems here on Earth is a very stupid mistake to make. Part of the problems we have right now is having too many people here on Earth in the first place.
Some problems will most likely never be solved.

Also: Humans know how to multi-task. We can do more than one thing at once.

a reply to: eriktheawful

I never said I was technically correct with my terminology! LOL But it all still comes down to the same thing. Our sun will either go "BANG!!!" or it will go "Psssttt.....", both of which will result in the same thing. The end of all life on earth. 500 million years from now, roughly...? I can live with that.

As for getting off the planet, I'd have no idea where to go. I have no flying car. If I had my way I'd already be mining asteroids close to Alpha-Centauri and earning a meagre living for myself.

Life is full of waiting. It gets kinda old sometimes, but remains strangely familiar at the same time.

I do not multi-task, ever. I can do more than one thing at once though, there's a huge difference imho.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

Does anyone remember the opening sequence to the 1981 film Heavy Metal?

:

I don't - never seen the movie. Is it good?
Thank you for this opening sequence - turns out Elon watched this movie.
He said himself it is real because it looks so fake but uhm if it quacks - Logic 1-1.

I'm searching for a thread where others also SEE that yesterdays Tesla car in space is fake footage but i can't find it.

double post