My issue with Musk sending a Tesla into space

[Coveny]

I’ve always been a big fan of magnetic levitation trains in vacuum tubes like the Virgin hyperloop. This project is inspiring. It could bring the globe together and better the lives of everyone on the planet. The concept is from Musk and it’s awesome on many different levels, but he’s not backing that horse. He wants to go to space, but rather than working with the maglev technology of a Startram he’s trying to re-invent the wheel with fossil fuel based rockets. To add insult to injury for his first package into space he sent a Tesla as a publicity stunt. I share the sadness for the waste of an opportunity for research and advancement that this represents.
http://www.iflscience.com/space/not-ever...nto-space/
 
And it’s not like Musk isn’t renewable energy conscious. His solar collecting shingles are very nice, and pretty cool. Even if I’m his Powerwall is un-inspiring it’s at least an attempt to move away from fossil fuels.
 
Now I tried to think positively about this. I tried to convince myself that this is just advertising, and it’s working. I should admit that a lot of people are talking about it. I’ll also admit that as this was the maiden voyage so as Musk said, “there is a good chance this monster rocket blows up”, but the whole thing just seems like such a waste to me. He could have easily sent up expendable experiments, or I’m sure he could have gotten some investors to take a risk with a contingency that if the rocket blew up they wouldn’t have to pay for the trip, but if it was successful they had to pay him and he could have recouped some much-needed capital on his passion project.
 
I get the infatuation with space, but it just seems like to me that he’s throwing reason out the window in pursue of his dreams.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Answered this at another site.

[Succubus]

This is what Thunderf00t thinks of the hyperloop bollocks.






As for your objection to fossil fuels the only alternative is liquid hydrogen but there are a whole shed load of issues with using that stuff. In practice nothing beats good old fashioned paraffin and lox.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Progress is being made in interesting fashions toward a low-power catalytic system of separating hydrogen from oxygen. The ScienceDaily site has more on that.

[vorlon13]

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 . . . .

[Tiberius]

I thought sending a Tesla into space was fucking cool. The fact that it’s live streaming the journey and “Life on Mars” is playing as it does so makes it even cooler.

People who have a problem with this are weird. It was a test flight, it was funny, it was inspirational. People are talking about space again.

[Anomalocaris]

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.

[Aoi Magi]

Considering how enthusiastic the world governments are about funding non-war related space tech and how stoked the general population is about normal-not-alien-related space ventures, I do believe we could use more of these real-science-and-pr-stunt-rolled-into-one demonstrations.

[Jackalope]

I'm not an Elon Musk fan particularly but I thought it was one of the coolest stunts ever performed.

The third stage needed ballast for a test flight. If he wants to use his car as ballast, that's his business.

[LastPoet]

As long the car has an insurance we are ok. If it hits a spaceship of sorts, with no insurance, that's an interstellar war waiting to happen.