Sending a car to Mars is a stunt. Tracking, monitoring and commanding it when it gets there is not.
Can you imagine the final odometer reading on the Tesla...
Quote from: Space Ghost 1962 on 12/03/2017 08:28 pmIf you wanted to enthuse govt HSF, you'd lob a boilerplate Dragon capsule on a cislunar trajectory.I think Jim has shot down this idea many times...
If you wanted to enthuse govt HSF, you'd lob a boilerplate Dragon capsule on a cislunar trajectory.
Quote from: Formica on 12/04/2017 04:05 amWhat do you mean by this? I would be gobsmacked if they didn't recover the center core. While it is basically a one off prototype, it will provide a virtual gold mine of engineering data for future block 5 gen center cores. From my admittedly amateur perspective, it seems downright foolish to expend it. (I may also be misinterpreting your statement.)When asked about it, Elon Musk said he thinks they can land the central core on a Red Dragon mission to Mars. Thats borderline but a very demanding mission.
What do you mean by this? I would be gobsmacked if they didn't recover the center core. While it is basically a one off prototype, it will provide a virtual gold mine of engineering data for future block 5 gen center cores. From my admittedly amateur perspective, it seems downright foolish to expend it. (I may also be misinterpreting your statement.)
Maybe he wanted his own, better variant of it. "I can do better things with my car than those eccentric British fellows that launched their on a rocket".
I do wonder if Elon has offered to his employees to place a personal item maybe limited in size and weight in the trunk. I would send a sample of hair (dna) or maybe a bit of my moms ashes Or maybe a DVD with family photos and videos.
Considering how much a sci-fi nerd Elon is, I suppose he (perfectly) knows about this peculiar Top Gear episode. Maybe he wanted his own, better variant of it. "I can do better things with my car than those eccentric British fellows that launched their on a rocket". Plus a Tesla roadster is far more sexier than a Reliant Robin - it is kind of comparing Margaret Thatcher with Taylor Swift.
Quote from: Rocket Science on 12/04/2017 12:30 pmCan you imagine the final odometer reading on the Tesla... There wouldn't be one . . .
Quote from: BobHk on 12/03/2017 01:26 pmSome naysayer see a man launching a car to Mars, I see a man giving his old Roadster a proper viking funeral...So, are you saying it is going to be on fire?. I think that is a wrong analogy.
Some naysayer see a man launching a car to Mars, I see a man giving his old Roadster a proper viking funeral...
Quote from: Senex on 12/04/2017 04:52 pmQuote from: Rocket Science on 12/04/2017 12:30 pmCan you imagine the final odometer reading on the Tesla... There wouldn't be one . . . I have images of Ferris Bueller's day off running through my head
Have not seen this one yet:
Quote from: jpo234 on 12/04/2017 06:44 pmHave not seen this one yet:This was posted on Saturday and says it’s launching in 6 months...uh...January is not 6 months away. 6 weeks maybe.
Reusing existing hardware is also an option.Starlink has several 15cm optical dishes, presumably for LASER comms.Several meter class telescopes at various points on the ground are relatively inexpensive, and combined with a several watt LASER the 15cm dish will illuminate about a 1Mm spot on earth at mars furthest distance.A 1m dish would pick up 10^-12 of this, or around 3*10^-12W, for a 6W laser 50% modulated, or 10^7 photons/s.Visible magnitude around 10, about the same as Phobos at close approach.Phobos is easily visible in amateur scopes of under 50cm. (in good seeing, with good geometry).I think it's safe to assume a datarate of several tens of kilobits a second downlink near Mars, without heroic optical efforts, even in the absence of extraordinary effort, for a cost of tens of thousands of dollars in ground equipment, rather than millions.The pointing of the mirror does of course need good 3-axis stabilisation of the craft. But starlink satellites are likely to want good pointing on their mirrors for signal strength reasons if nothing else.The starlink satellite will need moderately larger solar panels and various things to cope better with the environments on mars, but given that Elon has explicitly stated he plans to put starlink or similar around Mars, it does not seem a huge stretch to imagine that this might be available at least in a prototype form.Imagine also if it just so happens that the mirrors on the standard starlink can be flipped into a low bitrate mode and do kilobits to Mars with a six inch mirror on the far end, megabits to the moon, or a kilobit to Jupiter. (much higher with a larger mirror, and clearly not if you cross the planet or get too close as it's too bright).
Quote from: speedevil on 12/04/2017 04:47 pmReusing existing hardware is also an option.Starlink has several 15cm optical dishes, presumably for LASER comms.Several meter class telescopes at various points on the ground are relatively inexpensive, and combined with a several watt LASER the 15cm dish will illuminate about a 1Mm spot on earth at mars furthest distance.A 1m dish would pick up 10^-12 of this, or around 3*10^-12W, for a 6W laser 50% modulated, or 10^7 photons/s.Visible magnitude around 10, about the same as Phobos at close approach.Phobos is easily visible in amateur scopes of under 50cm. (in good seeing, with good geometry).I think it's safe to assume a datarate of several tens of kilobits a second downlink near Mars, without heroic optical efforts, even in the absence of extraordinary effort, for a cost of tens of thousands of dollars in ground equipment, rather than millions.The pointing of the mirror does of course need good 3-axis stabilisation of the craft. But starlink satellites are likely to want good pointing on their mirrors for signal strength reasons if nothing else.The starlink satellite will need moderately larger solar panels and various things to cope better with the environments on mars, but given that Elon has explicitly stated he plans to put starlink or similar around Mars, it does not seem a huge stretch to imagine that this might be available at least in a prototype form.Imagine also if it just so happens that the mirrors on the standard starlink can be flipped into a low bitrate mode and do kilobits to Mars with a six inch mirror on the far end, megabits to the moon, or a kilobit to Jupiter. (much higher with a larger mirror, and clearly not if you cross the planet or get too close as it's too bright).Exactly. The actual payload is not really the point, or even that important (although pictures of Mars from the parking cams should be interesting). The skills needed to implement the goal (and of course proving FH works as a system) are the goal. Most of that will not be on obvious display. And all of them tie into the goal of going to Mars. Hitting a target that's 5000x further away than any payload SX has launched so far.
They won't be tangibly "hitting a target". Mars isn't going to be there when the Roadster gets to the other end of the Hohmann transfer.But they can still calculate the accuracy of the orbital insertion as long as the upper stage is alive and can be tracked from Earth. That will tell them if the payload would have hit Mars if it launched in an interplanetary window.
As long as he has enough thrust/duration for boosters/US, he could be off by as much as 30 degrees in any direction and make a heliocentric orbit. So sans LOM or severe under performance, no big deal.
Quote from: john smith 19 on 12/03/2017 10:21 pmYou've identified your biggest serious competitor has a very long successful launch record and a strong pre-existing relationship with several large institutional customers. You simply can't match this because you have just not been in the business long enough to do so. Sounds ... fatalistic?
You've identified your biggest serious competitor has a very long successful launch record and a strong pre-existing relationship with several large institutional customers. You simply can't match this because you have just not been in the business long enough to do so.
QuoteFortunately for you they are effectively handicapped by joint parents who are completely fixated on short term gains and don't believe there is anything to worry about. Which suits you just fine. So you need to test you new LV without obviously demonstrating the level of skills you have in a way that's obvious enough to arouse the concern of your competitors parents. So the advantage gained is to not "scare the competition"?
Fortunately for you they are effectively handicapped by joint parents who are completely fixated on short term gains and don't believe there is anything to worry about. Which suits you just fine. So you need to test you new LV without obviously demonstrating the level of skills you have in a way that's obvious enough to arouse the concern of your competitors parents.
QuoteOn this basis any fairly heavy object would be suitable as a surrogate payload. Sending your car to Mars maintains the "Elon Musk, what a crazzzzy guy, eh?" image, while in fact giving your Operations team a fairly hard test of their skills in trajectory design and propulsion management, while fulfilling the goal that anything SX does is with aim of getting you to Mars betters/faster/cheaper. Advantage of "crazzzy guy" please?
On this basis any fairly heavy object would be suitable as a surrogate payload. Sending your car to Mars maintains the "Elon Musk, what a crazzzzy guy, eh?" image, while in fact giving your Operations team a fairly hard test of their skills in trajectory design and propulsion management, while fulfilling the goal that anything SX does is with aim of getting you to Mars betters/faster/cheaper.
Sounds to me all we're saying here is coming up with ways to "handicap" (as in golf) the performance, in asking for a "mulligan" in advance?