Falcon Heavy - 7&8 Reuse - Elon's Roadster Demo - LC-39A

[ecarfan]

Cool. Nice to have an official photo.

Look in the rear license plate area. There are 7 small circles, the left most one is different than the others. I don’t know what those circles are.

Photo credit: SpaceX/Elon Musk

 

[ecarfan]

Look in the rear license plate area. There are 7 small circles, the left most one is different than the others. I don’t know what those circles are

My error. Those circles are on the car. They are something else. See this photo which shows them in a different location in the image. They appear to indicate the total number of photos in the series. Maybe an Instragram thing? See my next post.

 

[ecarfan]

 

[ecarfan]

Elon’s post on Instragram, quote:

“elonmuskA Red Car for the Red Planet

• 
  Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring.
  Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel.
  The payload will be an original Tesla Roadster, playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit.”

 

[Grendal]

Looking at those pictures you can really begin to understand why the fairings are worth $6 million. Wow. They are definitely not just big blocks of carbon fiber.

 

[Doug_G]

I think it means that they will boost the Tesla into an orbit that takes it out to Mars. Since there won't be a circularization burn at Mars orbit it will cycle back towards Earth's orbit again. So yes it will be an eliptical orbit. And it will continue to wander back and forth between Earth and Mars orbit distance for pretty much forever.

 

[bxr140]

I think it means that they will boost the Tesla into an orbit that takes it out to Mars. Since there won't be a circularization burn at Mars orbit it will cycle back towards Earth's orbit again. So yes it will be an eliptical orbit. And it will continue to wander back and forth between Earth and Mars orbit distance for pretty much forever.

Barring any unit conversion anomalies...

 

[Grendal]

I think it means that they will boost the Tesla into an orbit that takes it out to Mars. Since there won't be a circularization burn at Mars orbit it will cycle back towards Earth's orbit again. So yes it will be an eliptical orbit. And it will continue to wander back and forth between Earth and Mars orbit distance for pretty much forever.

Until a passing BFR picks it up for nostalgic reasons....

 

[ccutrer]

Looking at those pictures you can really begin to understand why the fairings are worth $6 million. Wow. They are definitely not just big blocks of carbon fiber.

I was just thinking the exact same thing.

 

[Nikxice]

Look in the rear license plate area. There are 7 small circles, the left most one is different than the others. I don’t know what those circles are.

Elon's Roadster might be rigged for otherworldly communication, just in case of a close encounter with the mothership.

 

[Grendal]

It looks like the static fire is scheduled for January 6th. It depends on how well Zuma goes off, of course. If the static fire goes off without issue then there is a tentative date for January 15th for launch of the FH. I think it is fair to say: expect delays.

Falcon Heavy preparing for Static Fire test – NASASpaceFlight.com

 

[MacGreiner]

Even the static fire would be worth seeing, or should I say, hearing/feeling.

 

[AMPUP]

Rollout and upright testing has begun

 

[HankLloydRight]

Any guesses on when the launch is?

And if/when a date is announced, what are the chances it will be scrubbed?

 

[ecarfan]

Any guesses on when the launch is?
And if/when a date is announced, what are the chances it will be scrubbed?

If by “when” you mean “time of day”, we have no information on that. If you mean “date”, @Grendal posted above, Jan 15.

Chance of a scrub? Always possible. I would guess a postponement is more likely with this FH mission compared to the usual F9 mission. But there is no way to give a reliable quantitative answer to your question.

@Grendal thanks for reviving this thread to hopefully get it focused on the actual FH mission as opposed to the other long running “anything about FH” thread.

 

[HankLloydRight]

If by “when” you mean “time of day”, we have no information on that. If you mean “date”, @Grendal posted above, Jan 15.

Oh, I missed that part, thanks.

I'm asking because of the referral award to see a FH launch. If it's on the 15th, that's not a lot of time to plan/book flights, hotels, etc. Also, Tesla hasn't sent anything out yet about it. I know they've done this before -- very short notice -- with the Gigafactory party and the Semi event.. just thought we'd get more than two weeks. And the chances of postponement are pretty high, I'd think, so the entire trip could be a washout.

Yes, I know, #firstworldproblems

 

[ecarfan]

I'm asking because of the referral award to see a FH launch

That Tesla referral reward may not be specifically for the first FH “demo” launch. It could apply to a future launch.

 

[Nikxice]

It looks like the static fire is scheduled for January 6th

Even the static fire would be worth seeing, or should I say, hearing/feeling

If there's a livestreaming source available for a FH engine lightup this coming Saturday, I'll bet Grendal will link it. Also, thanks for all the other SpaceX launch threads initiated throughout a tremendously successful 2017!

 

[HankLloydRight]

That Tesla referral reward may not be specifically for the first FH “demo” launch. It could apply to a future launch.

Cool. I'm OK with that. thanks.

 

[Grendal]

That Tesla referral reward may not be specifically for the first FH “demo” launch. It could apply to a future launch.

If the FH demo flight goes off without an anomaly, then there will be Arabsat 6A and the military/science STP-2 this year.

Not a lot on the schedule for FH after that. The problem with finding FH payloads is that the market for these types of payloads are being created by FH. Until the rocket exists and is launched successfully then there will be a huge question mark for a satellite manufacturer whether the satellite they are building will ever get to orbit. Or they pay the ridiculous prices that a Delta IV Heavy asks for. I fully expect that after FH launches successfully then we'll see a bunch of satellite manufacturers start to build satellites that will launch on FH.

So a long explanation to basically say that I expect to see a lot more launches for FH in a few years from now and not too many in the near future after the couple scheduled launches.

If there's a livestreaming source available for a FH engine lightup this coming Saturday, I'll bet Grendal will link it. Also, thanks for all the other SpaceX launch threads initiated throughout a tremendously successful 2017!

I'll keep an eye out for the livestream and post what I find.

You're welcome.