• Rob Frize

    What a world we live in today. #BBCRadMac

  • Paul_Scutts

    “Get your motor runnin’ Head out on the highway Lookin’ for adventure And whatever comes our way Yeah” … in this case twenty-seven motors to get the show on the road. 🙂

  • Brainbit

    I noticed Mr Musk has taken off the number plates, I guess he wants to avoid any speeding tickets?

  • Michael Halpern

    Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.

  • ThomasLMatula

    Breaking the old space as government science paradigm one launch at a time 🙂

  • redneck

    Speed limit is 300,000 km/sec on this trip. A speeding ticket would be a good thing.

  • Michael Halpern

    and sometimes 2 in the same week.

  • ‘Its 54.6 million miles to Mars, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes. its dark and we’re wearing sunglasses’

  • Andrew Tubbiolo

    Oh look they have acoustic padding on the faring. No doubt to avoid violating sound ordinances as they blast “Space Oddity” over the stereo. Merry Christmas Everyone!

  • ThomasLMatula

    It’s missing something… I know, it needs a mannequin in an Ironman costume in the driver’s seat 🙂

  • MzUnGu

    Nothing says saving the planet than throwing away a perfectly good car every few years. 😛

    This just speaks so much about this electric fad.

  • delphinus100

    Or perhaps George Jetson…

  • Michael Halpern

    Not a fad, this is more of a publicity stunt for both Tesla and SpaceX, since this is at cost not for profit, it actually might not be that much, compared to other publicity stunts companies do, such as the Goodyear blimp, in fact they have to launch a demonstration mission anyways, if they were oldspace they would have just done a boiler plate but SpaceX likes to have fun with demonstration missions, for instance the first falcom 9 and dragon spacecraft had on board a giant wheel of cheese,

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  • WhoAmI

    Couldn’t be better publicity for both SpaceX and *especially* Tesla.

    Playing Space Oddity by David Bowie is a perfect choice. It would be a great tribute to Bowie if there was some way to launch it by Bowie’s birthday in two weeks (Jan 8) and less so by the anniversary of his death (Jan 10), but it looks like it will be closer to the end of January based on earlier projections (e.g. 3 weeks after getting it upright for tests).

  • MzUnGu

    Musk is getting tired of his old car, excuse to be rid of it, just like those thousands that gotten in line… Just an excuse for everyone to rationalize buying some new gadget to show off every few years. Vanity, piosity, publicity…whatever u wanna call it.

  • Michael Halpern

    That’s all cars not just EVs, and it’s the car or a block of concrete, which is more interesting?

  • Search

    They need to make its headlights come on when the fairing comes off.

  • Michael Halpern

    Also Musk owns Tesla so he can get the vehicles at cost instead of asking price, if he wanted

  • Larry J

    Hit it.

  • ThomasLMatula

    The real problem with the electric cars are replacing the battery packs.

  • ThomasLMatula

    Hopefully it will have mud on the tires filled with micro-organism to drive the planetary protection patrol up the wall. Yes, it won’t hit Mars but it is still flying around out there in their nice clean Universe.

  • Michael Halpern

    Actually Musk already tweeted out its going to be thoroughly sterilized, as annoying as planetary protection is, from a scientific perspective it makes sense, it should be abide by it within reason, until we are actually ready to start colonization efforts, as to avoid irreparably contaminating the ultimate experiment to find life on other planetary bodies, we only have a limited sample size within our solar system to study, in order to make informed predictions on life beyond the solar system, we need that research resource, it is the only way that within the next 100 years we are likely to solidly inform the question on if life exists on other worlds, even if its microbial, it will prove conclusively that life can start elsewhere. there is also the problem of needing to at least understand if there is any, if its harmful and if so, how to kill it, if its not harmful (or even if it is within reason) it can be a resource to exploit, being evolved for the planetary body it’s indigenous to, be it directly, or for genetic engineering.

  • Michael Halpern

    There is also the political point to it, the ridiculousness of the payload ensures exposure, the destination is a statement to the world that private space is capable of providing exploration services particularly launch, something that Gen-pub doesn’t realize is possible, and certain special interests in Congress will lose a lot of pork funneling ability for.
    Besides thats a gen 1 roadster, a Model S is better preforming and he might switch to the prototype gen2 roadster.

    You have to realize that Falcon Heavy is a scant few payload tons short of SLS (block 1), far less expensive to operate, has a higher potential cadence, and brings money into the US, its cadence will enable it to become safer than SLS ever can, (NASA safety analysts are worried that the 1 year gap between launches will cause crews to forget safety critical details) when you look at it critically, SLS provides no significant advantage or technological development over FH not enough to justify the cost difference. Thing is, most people don’t know what SpaceX is, what they do, and what they have done, so they don’t realize there are better alternatives to the traditional model for space exploration, a space industrial revolution is going on, and yet much of the country doesn’t realize it.

  • Robert Sutton

    Will the Tesla have a passenger?

    What type of cheese was it?

  • Robert Sutton

    How do you sterilize a wheel?

  • Robert Sutton

    I heard it was his own
    The processing might make it the most expensive Tesla of all with the greatest mileage(kilometerage)

  • Jeff2Space

    That really has not been a problem with most makes and models of hybrids and even all electric cars. The battery packs in the Model S are doing quite well in terms of lifetime and (minimal) capacity degradation. Here’s a cite:

    https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1110149_tesla-model-s-battery-life-what-the-data-show-so-far

    You could say the same thing about replacing an engine in a gasoline powered car. When the gas engine goes at 100,000+ miles, most people don’t bother paying to rebuild or replace the engine, they just junk the car.

  • windbourne

    LOL.
    Not at all. None of the EVs that have been developed in the last 10 years have needed to have their batteries replaced, EXCEPT the first roadster and cars with less than 150 MPC (such as the leaf).

    Even now, a number of Model S have over 250,000 miles with all but 2 cars having battery levels above 90%.
    And a couple of Model S have over 325,000 miles and still have over 90% loads.

    Finally, it is only 90 seconds to replace a Model S/X/3 battery.

    And while the Leaf/Bolt/Volts/etc need battery replacement, it is still more than 10 years worth of driving.

  • windbourne

    Most EVs are good, but the early roadsters that used cells from China has had issues. In addition, the leaf has actually been a disaster for the southern part of America. It would be fine for all of Europe as well as Japan, but middle east, south east asia, any where between 30s will not be good for it.

    And yeah, our 2013 Model S has 50K miles and is still at 96%.

  • patb2009

    In a spacesuit. Get some data on how the suit performs

  • patb2009

    Lots of Bleach.

  • patb2009

    the Leaf air cooled pack is less then reliable but that’s one out of many

  • Michael Halpern

    I know of an EV that has covered nearly 30mi in almost 14 years without maintenance, mind you this is a very special “ev” and probably the 2nd most expensive in the solar system, when you consider transportation costs, tied with a twin in that respect but the twin is no longer active way longer than the 90 days it was supposed to last…

  • windbourne

    yeah, that is why I put “EXCEPT the first roadster and cars with less than 150 MPC (such as the leaf).”.
    I would not buy a leaf south of Denver. It is obvious that the cells are easy to destroy with heat and nissan did a HORRIBLE cheap job with that POS. But, nearly all of the leaf’s battery replacements were in America’s southern region. The northern part of US is temperate enough, like japan/europe, to handle the AIR hvac.

  • Jeff2Space

    This is why Tesla has invested so much in the Gigafactory. Keeping production in the US, where it can be tightly controlled, is key to Tesla’s long term success. Labor costs aren’t nearly the problem they used to be since factories these days are, for the most part, highly automated.