The frontier at hand

SpaceX launch brings space travel closer

The successful launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket last week marked the beginning of a new chapter in the annals of space exploration.

For the first time, a private company, and not a government-sponsored agency, has produced the world’s most powerful rocket operating today.

The SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch also showed it could dramatically reduce costs with the pioneering use of renewable booster rockets that return safely to landing pads on Earth after lifting heavy cargo to the edge of space. The whole process of launch and safe return to Earth also had the virtue of appearing beautifully choreographed.

But people will probably remember this historic flight for what they didn’t see, but could imagine. The cargo in Falcon Heavy’s primary capsule is a midnight cherry Tesla Roadster belonging to the SpaceX founder, billionaire Elon Musk, who also founded Tesla.

Sitting at the wheel of the Roadster and wearing a space suit is a mannequin that has just enough of the right stuff to merit a close encounter with Mars many months from now.

When the panels of the capsule fall away, the Roadster and its mannequin driver will be exposed to the vacuum of space. With the solar wind at its back, the mannequin and the Roadster will suddenly be the coolest objects in the solar system — idiosyncratic symbols of the statusobsessed civilization they left behind on Earth.

The Roadster is destined for countless orbits around the sun that will put it close to Mars at certain points in its elliptical revolution. Mr. Musk tweeted his hope that his beloved Roadster will be a denizen of space for billions of years. It’s more likely that meteorites, radiation and the wear-and-tear of being a fast moving object in space will whittle down the car’s leather seats and other organic compounds in a few decades, leaving only plastic and metal to be pulverized into dust over the coming centuries. There won’t be much of the car or mannequin left in 10,000 years, so there’s no point in getting a trillion-mile warranty.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Elon Musk deserves major kudos for his visionary instincts. Making space travel cheaper will make the countless innovations necessary to become an interplanetary species possible.