We’re doing OK for a bunch of monkeys
Musk surprised by perfect rocket launch that put car into space
THE billionaire who has transfixed earthlings by putting a car into orbit around their planet today hailed the extraordinary achievement, saying “We’re doing OK for a bunch of monkeys. Humanity rocks!”
Elon Musk, 46, appeared taken aback by the success of the mission after a perfect launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, which has his cherry red Tesla Roadster electric sports car perched on its nose.
Mr Musk, who runs the private rocket company Space X, said that before liftoff in Florida he had half-expected disaster.
“I had this image of a giant explosion on the pad, a wheel bouncing down the road, the Tesla logo landing somewhere,” Musk said.
He has plenty of experience with rocket accidents, from his original Falcon 1 test flights to his follow-up Falcon 9s, one of which exploded on a nearby pad during an ignition test in 2016.
He said: “I’ve seen rockets blow up so many different ways, so yeah, it’s a great relief when it actually works.”
However, apart from one of the three booster rockets failing to land, as planned, on a floating platform, the launch from the Kennedy Space Centre went like clockwork.
The $100,000 car is the first wheeled vehicle in space apart from moon buggies. A space-suited mannequin was at the wheel, named “Starman” after the David Bowie song. A sign on the dashboard repeated the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy mantra “Don’t panic!” while Bowie’s “Life on Mars?” plays on a loop on the radio.
One of the cir- cuit boards on the car has the message “Made on Earth by humans.”
The car is due to go into a huge oval orbit around the Sun that will take it close to Mars in about six months’ time before heading back towards Earth. It could be shuttling between Earth and Mars for a billion years, Mr Musk says. The South Africa-born billionaire, who founded Tesla and the PayPal payment system, added: “Maybe discovered by some future alien race, thinking, What were you guys doing? Did they worship this car? Why did they have a little car? It will really confuse them.” The powerful rocket is designed to deliver a maximum payload to lowEarth orbit of 64 tonnes, the equivalent of putting five London double-decker buses in space, at a third of the cost of the next most powerful rocket.