Featured Tesla going for a mileage record

The fuel economy will be atrocious!
Think of the depreciation of all those miles!

 

I think charging it's going to be tough.

 

Well I have a lot of respect for Elon Musk and Tesla.
But I don't like this.

Seems like a lot of money, effort and work just to create "space junk" and a publicity stunt. Albeit a long lasting one.

Really, don't do it.
I like Tesla, beautiful car. But I don't want it reduced to an oddity footnote and a orbiting piece of garbage around Mars.

I hope this is all just a holiday joke.

 

If a test flight is going up anyway -- generally a good idea before sending the first humans along -- what is the harm of putting that car in, in place of generic concrete or steel block test masses?

Mass equivalent to the future payload is a necessary part of the test. Using a car won't change the amount of space junk.

 

It's so much a gimmicky publicity -stunt feel to it.
It seems IMO below the standards of Tesla and Elon Musk.

It may not change the "amount" of space junk...but why turn a Tesla into space junk? Just so you can say there's a Tesla orbiting Mars? Well it might get under Bob Lutz's skin....I suppose that's something.

I still wouldn't do it.

 

IIRC that was also the first Tesla Roadster produced. Many companies put the first model off the line in a museum.

 

In the world of marketing, there is nothing unusual about that.

 

On the plus side:

One less car on Earth should make the rest a bit more valuable.
If the car can make a soft landing the first person on Mars will have something to drive.

Question:
How much is SpaceX paying Musk for the car? He does have a history of turning a profit on transactions with his companies.

 

Never said it was unusual. Although I think sending anything to orbit Mars is pretty rare and justifiably called unusual.
I said I didn't like it- and expected more from Tesla and Elon Musk.

I certainly can't stop him.
But I just can't get behind the idea of sending any automobile all the way to Mars as a calling card of human interest.
At least a concrete block or steel mass could be argued to be simply a utilitarian tool and stepping stone to further human exploration.
Sending a Tesla? Is just nearly a childish ego play. It is advertising, it is a publicity stunt. It will be space junk orbiting Mars.

It will become liter, a piece of plastic in the ocean.

 

You mean sending up a wheel of cheese on the first Falcon 9 flight was not gimmicky?

 

I agree with @The Electric Me

Obviously a publicity stunt, but this would be more heart-warming if there was a more noble reason to expend all this energy and money. I'm sure there are plenty of families who could have a better holiday with this money. I know he is already a very philanthropic individual, but this...

 

It'll probably just piss off the Martians.

 

The whole idea of traveling to Mars is idiotic, IMO. We have such a beautiful and life-giving planet here. Mars is an inhospitable, cold world. Why would anyone want to go there, unless they absolutely had to for survival. And at that point an orbiting space station is just as good or better than Mars. Why Mars? It's a horrible place for a human being to be!

 

That is only temporary. In the long term, nature will turn it into a scorched cinder, then likely swallow it into the sun, regardless of what we do to it before then.

Very long term, leaving Earth is essential for our (or whatever replaces us) survival. Mars will be a stepping stone on that journey away from here.

Staying on Earth, puts a date our our extinction. An unnecessarily early extinction date.