My issue with Musk sending a Tesla into space

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Musk's big rocket does have a HUGE improvement over the shuttle.  Musk does NOT use ammonium perchlorate in his design.  While rarely criticized, the shuttle burned tons and tons of the stuff up to very high altitudes (150,000 feet IIRC).  The problem with that is the perchlorate contains chlorine and it is deposited in the atmosphere in the ozone layer.  How many aerosol cans equivalent would a shuttle launch represent?  Well, a bunch, I'm not doing the math.  But any more chlorine in the ozone layer was a bad thing.

So Musk did a major environmental plus by not using big solid rocket boosters to get to his 5 million pounds of thrust.  And such a big rocket, for under $100,000,000 would inherently be inclined to be environmentally friendly.  He's clearly not utilizing exotic materials/super advanced technology/excessive head count to loft his payloads.  Just a quick look at the price tag I think confers a pretty big embrace of working on the 'green' side of the ledger.

As for ballast, IIRC the Saturn 5 went up with sand.  Other rockets have used concrete.  I personally loved the picture of a used car being used for ballast. Not a practical way of getting rid of used cars, but maybe it will give someone an idea . . . .

I wonder what Falcon heavy’s Actual LEO capacity is if it launched with the intent of recovering the boosters. The weight of the landing struts, structural reinformemts, and reserve fuel on the fist stage has to substantially reduce the rockets payload capacity.

I suspect the advertised LEO capacity is based on configurationsvthat forgo recovery possibility.

The next gen rockets will have a new engine, so anything gleaned from this launch is problematic in the long term.

[Tiberius]

Oh also the synchronized booster landing was icing on the cake. Just wow.

[Coveny]

The dummy payload part is what I have an issue with. They could have send several probes that scan, take picture, and collect data about the trip to Mars, and circling Mars as well as sending a whole bunch of other experiments up there with it that all could have been expendable, and given the live feeds and whatnot that this used car has done.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

But they don't. Any experiment that has designers who don't mind it blowing up isn't really worth it, and is probably dubiously designed for launch to boot. The dummy payloads usually have devices in them to record all the data they can grab, but that's not mandatory. Goddard was happy if the chute deployed.

Copied from my response to this post elsewhere.

Now if I just remember where the rest of them are...

[vorlon13]

I was actually mortified the Cassini Saturn orbiter was sent up on a newer rocket configuration that I didn't think was ready for anything 'nice'.

Just throwing a camera and sensors and the appropriate communication gear to work back to earth from Mars ain't cheap, AFAIK once the batteries go dead on the upper stage Musks test payload is just dead weight and no further $$$ will be expended from the DSN to track/command it. Also this test payload would need a few trajectory corrections on the way to Mars (or wherever) for a useful flyby, it all costs money and Musk was tryin g to show just what he can do with $90,000,000. Not $250,000,000.

Additionally, from the vagaries described in the out bound trajectory, it sounds like the upper stage burned till it exhausted all it's fuel, not a precision burn with a specific destination in mind. They started off saying it would go out to Mars distance and then loop back towards earth's orbit and repeat indefinitely. Last I heard its furthest point from the sun is now way out in the main asteroid belt. Another + for Musk if his crew was able to squeeze some more delta vee out of his rocket.

And like Tibs noted it captured imaginations the world over, it really scored some major advertising bucks for Musk in the way a big block of concrete ballast could not. $90,000,000 rocket and a free multi-million advertising campaign for all his businesses.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm glad Musk had style, there's little enough of it to be found these days.

[Fireball]

I haven't supported a launch in over ten years. Back in that day, a Titan IV B without strap-ons was ca $500,000,000. And I don't think that the Delta IV Heavy is any cheaper. So, Elon Musk is costing serious money less than LockMart-Boeing's efforts. Some programs are using Russian Proton boosters, since they are cheaper. Pretty funny (ironic) to see in a Defense program.