A real Hoopy Frood!
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More info:
With the quoted C3 of 12 km2/s2, it could have got to Mars with a reasonable arrival velocity if it had launched three or four months from now, when InSight and the MarCOs are launching.
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Eh. They had to put something in the rocket as test-flight payload, and since it was test flight, nobody wanted to risk losing their expensive and precious scientific equipment. So the options are basically a big block of concrete, or this. And this is so much cooler on every level. This is the kind of stuff that is going to inspire today’s kids to get into rocketry and astronautics and space exploration. Don’t underestimate the value of good advertising!
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Okay, so Elon’s not taking his money and being Batman, but this is cool too…
Although I don’t think that it is meaningful to say that the car is playing “Starman” when it is in a vacuum. I mean there’s no sound coming out of the speakers. But I guess it is a way of testing the telemetry.
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So - what are all the flat earthers saying about this? Musk is now part of the conspiracy?
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It is being filmed using a miniature backed by a rear projection CGI image of Earth. It is obvious, really. You can tell from the shadows.
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Not the first - but still - Commander Rick would be proud.
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Okay. This is actually pretty far out.
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My initial impulse is to joke that if Musk is the legendary figure of genius his press releases say he is, that’s some disobedient minion up there in that suit.
Then I remember that by all accounts, he’s exactly the kind of person who’d do that.
This isn’t to shit on the products his companies make or the accomplishments of his employees (including himself), which speak for themselves. But I can never see one of those rocket launches without thinking, “the lesson that a zillion wannabe Musks are going to take away from this is that being a reckless, abusive asshole with platinum-quality PR is a surefire winning strategy.”
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Never meet your heroes, in other words.
Is it ethically right to love what a man does and despise what he is? That’s where I am with so many people nowadays, not the least Elon Musk.
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Tells Steve Wozniak, “You’re not a real Silicon Valley boy.”
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A book which in its first chapter tells of an alien visiting Earth under the name “Ford Prefect”, chosen to fit in with the dominant life form on the planet - the automobile.
And now we’re sending them to other planets…
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I’m sure if you asked any of the many many career scientists who’ve been barking their shins against America’s underfunding of the space program their whole careers, they could have come up with something better than a block of concrete or some guy’s old sports car. They’re used to losing equipment, that’s not really a factor. It just feels cheap to me. The amazing re-useable rocket with a you tube “will it blend” episode attached. Maybe I just don’t get it cuz I’m not a dude.
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Good question. Not well.
It’ll get the full, un-filtered effect of Sun’s UV radiation. Even a primo wax job wouldn’t stop it. (I see a car wax commercial brewing here.)
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Oy, if there was ever a guy who doesn’t have the physiognomy for the Soviet-Realist poster boy treatment, Elon Musk is that guy.
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The future sucks, I’m afraid…
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