Sports car sent to Mars blasting out Bowie
A car launched by Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur, is flying off into space with David Bowie’s song Life on Mars playing on repeat. Mr Musk used a super rocket – the Falcon Heavy vehicle – to send the Tesla car into an orbit that will take it past Mars. The rocket deployed twice the launching power of any existing space craft. The tycoon explained that the car “will be in deep space for a billion years or so”. About half a million people watched the launch in Florida.
Harriet Alexander
Helena Horton
A CHERRY red Tesla car was yesterday launched into space by Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur, with David Bowie’s Life on Mars playing on repeat.
Thousands of people gathered in Florida to watch the launch – the culmination of a plan five years in the making.
Mr Musk used a super rocket – the Falcon Heavy vehicle – to send the car into an elliptical orbit around the Sun that will take it past Mars, deploying technology with twice the launching power of any existing rocket, and double that of the Saturn V, which launched the Apollo lunar missions. Mr Musk explained that the Roadster “will be in deep space for a billion years or so, if it doesn’t blow up on ascent”.
His fears were not realised, however, and the world’s most powerful rocket successfully took off from the Kennedy Space Center at 3.45pm local time (8.45pm GMT). About two and a half minutes after the launch, the two side boosters on the rocket detached and headed back to Earth to land on two Spacex landing pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Among the online spectators was Tim Peake, the British astronaut, who described the feat as “simply awesome”.
Mr Peake tweeted his congratulations to the team on “a phenomenal technical achievement”, adding that it marked “the dawn of a new era of space exploration”. Earlier this week, in a Youtube video to promote the launch, Bowie’s song played as the Falcon Heavy was shown on the launch pad.
Following the launch, Mr Musk later tweeted a picture of his old Tesla car orbiting over Australia. The Roadster has a dummy, which Mr Musk calls Starman, sitting in the driver’s seat.
The car will take at least six months to travel the 200 million miles to Mars. Speaking ahead of the launch, he said: “I would consider it a win if it just clears the pad and doesn’t blow the pad to smithereens.”
The South African-born entrepreneur has promised “epic views” of space from cameras strapped to the vehicle as it is thrown into a heliocentric orbit called Trans-mars injection, which could in future be the easiest way to move objects between Earth and the red planet.
If the maiden voyage is successful, it raises interesting possibilities for future innovation, including larger US satellites and also the realisation of Mr Musk’s dream to launch hundreds of satellites into space in order to give broadband internet access to the developing world.
It also means space exploration could be hugely enhanced, with larger robots sent to Mars. Some could even visit outer planets such as Jupiter and Saturn. Nasa is also developing a super-rocket, but Mr Musk’s, if successful, is much cheaper. Nasa’s Space Launch System is said to cost $1billion (£715million) per flight, while the entrepreneur claims his Falcon Heavy will cost just $90 million (£64million) per flight.
Casey Dreier, the director of space policy at the Planetary Society said: “Nasa is going to be saying: ‘Look, instead of waiting around for SLS, we can start putting pieces of our deep space gateway or orbiting lunar outpost in place. The question is will it be reliable enough for the government and others to put in their most valuable assets to be worth the reduced cost?”