Starman and the Falcon Heavy

Why we can't see stars in starman video ?
Others have pointed out that this question has already been answered in this and other threads.

However, it isnt a new question. Arthur C Clarke touched on it in his 1961 novel "A Fall of Moondust" in a scene on page 97 where TV camera crew are videoing a rescue mission on the moon;

And, of course, there was that eternal dilemma of the stars, though that was an aesthetic problem, rather than a technical one.

The public expected to see stars in the lunar sky even during the daytime, because they were there. But the fact was that the human eye could not normally see them; during the day, the eye was so desensitized by the glare that the sky appeared an empty, absolute black. If you wanted to see the stars, you had to look for them through blinkers that cut off all other light; then your pupils would slowly expand, and one by one the stars would come out until they filled the field of view. But as soon as you looked at anything else--_phut_, out they went. The human eye could look at the daylight stars, or the daylight landscape; it could never see both at once.

But the TV camera could, if desired, and some directors preferred it to do so. Others argued that this falsified reality. It was one of those problems that had no correct answer. Jules sided with the realists, and kept the star gate circuit switched off unless the studio asked for it.
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Hmm, is it just me or do the tires look more "bowed" out than in the picture from @Leifer ?

I haven't found confirmation (yet) but I am sure they accounted for the pressure in the tires at sea-level, and when the tires entered an interplanetary vacuum.

Often film/movie stunt cars and "safety tires" are filled with a catalyzed foam product so they are drive-able even after puncture. Yet, foam still contains air bubbles.

It's something I'll look into. (I may have "sources"....lol)........ and "how" the car was prepped for space.
They could have under-inflated the tires at sea-level....in preparation for space. (and probably all other sealed canister components of this car)
Remember, often tires can be over-inflated by several pounds air pressure (PSI) and still function.
This is not the same when thin stretchy balloons are subject to a vacuum.....


space_vacuum.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum#Outer_space
 
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Am I reading this right and someone launched a car into orbit? I don't follow the news as it is too depressing.
The short version: SpaceX tested the largest rocket since the Saturn V. Nobody will trust an important/expensive payload on an untested rocket. Normally these tests use a block of metal or plastic, but SpaceX has a tradition of doing goofy stuff. The Dragon capsule test flew with a large wheel of cheese in the pilot's position, for example.

This time they launched Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster, with a space suited mannequin named Starman in the driver's seat, David Bowie on the stereo, a Hotwheels Tesla Roadster on the dashboard, a tiny Starman in the toy car, and a sign reading, "DON'T PANIC!" in large friendly letters.
 
Nobody will trust an important/expensive payload on an untested rocket.
well, at least not anymore after 1996.
Ariane 5's first test flight (Ariane 5 Flight 501) on 4 June 1996 failed, with the rocket self-destructing 37 seconds after launch because of a malfunction in the control software.
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Cluster was a constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft which were launched on the maiden flight of the Ariane 5 rocket, Flight 501, and subsequently lost when that rocket failed to achieve orbit.
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Normally these tests use a block of metal or plastic, but SpaceX has a tradition of doing goofy stuff.
I don't think adding something like metal or concrete blocks (weight) to the payload area would curtail the social media NASA NAy-SAyers, ...from posting accusations of fakery.
A cool car with a spaceman is a much more interesting test payload.
And more interesting to mock, on line.

Any launch these days is now accused of "fakery" among the small but verbal internet crowd.
The lack of push-back or official rebuttals from SpaceX or NASA, etc......seems to me, to mean these organizations don't take such accusations seriously or worth rebuttal.
The science is there for anyone to check, and there's no reason for SpaceX to re-explain the science to the doubters who already doubt the science.
 
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Launch insurance is more ubiquitous than it used to be, too, and insurers usually won't touch an unproven vehicle. Years ago the dice rolled the same on any rocket and a loss meant saying goodbye to a lot of money, bit now that money can be recouped, but insurance is a game of statistics and the industry hates blind gambles on huge numbers like these.

But for the FH, the test called for a large payload (not just the car, but there was a large mounting frame and the opposite side of the fairing didn't eject) going to literally nowhere. Even if they were selling, I doubt there were any buyers.
 
.seems to me, to mean these organizations don't take such accusations seriously or worth rebuttal.
No need to. After all the cries of hoax come from a very small, albeit vocal minority, and there a number of us science nerds, debunkers and rationalist who are ready and willing to counter their claims, so they can get on with the science and let those who are willing to stand up to the bunkum do so on their behalf. :D
 
The short version: SpaceX tested the largest rocket since the Saturn V. Nobody will trust an important/expensive payload on an untested rocket. Normally these tests use a block of metal or plastic, but SpaceX has a tradition of doing goofy stuff. The Dragon capsule test flew with a large wheel of cheese in the pilot's position, for example.

This time they launched Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster, with a space suited mannequin named Starman in the driver's seat, David Bowie on the stereo, a Hotwheels Tesla Roadster on the dashboard, a tiny Starman in the toy car, and a sign reading, "DON'T PANIC!" in large friendly letters.

DON'T PANIC! Is from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy



Judging by the famous tweet below, I believe there is one more reason for the Live Views of the Earth and it was Elon wanting to prove that the Earth is a sphere to flat earthers.

 
I thought it was a reminder to the mannequin that he is just a mannequin, so when that space rock blows out his visor, he will still be ok.
Your right, but should Starman encounter The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast Of Tharg, he will know what to do...

....provided he has his towel with him.
 
....provided he has his towel with him.
Apparently according to an interview with Musk he indeed does have a towel with him, safe (for now) in the glovebox along with a copy of "hitchhikers guide to the galaxy." https://www.space.com/39602-falcon-heavy-tesla-not-just-space-junk.html

The thought of an alien race actually finding the car and towel and book intact and actually deciphering the book is rather priceless. Much scratching of tentacles one imagines.
 
Or even just future humans. We might have a chance in a few hundred years to attempt a recovery, and the whole thing is a pop culture onion of references to music, Ian Banks, Douglas Adams, and a couple old sci-fi movies. It takes a serious nerd to peel back all the layers right now, take them too far from cultural context and it's just a lot of nonsense that somebody dumped in deep space.
 
Or even just future humans. We might have a chance in a few hundred years to attempt a recovery, and the whole thing is a pop culture onion of references to music, Ian Banks, Douglas Adams, and a couple old sci-fi movies. It takes a serious nerd to peel back all the layers right now, take them too far from cultural context and it's just a lot of nonsense that somebody dumped in deep space.

Should've launched a teapot in homage to Russell.
 
The thought of an alien race actually finding the car and towel and book intact and actually deciphering the book is rather priceless. Much scratching of tentacles one imagines.

That is, until some alien race gets the idea from the book and decides that it is a good idea to build a new "Hyperspatial Express Route" right through Earth, and it needs to be destroyed. Then we might think differently about Musk including that book.
 
That is, until some alien race gets the idea from the book and decides that it is a good idea to build a new "Hyperspatial Express Route" right through Earth, and it needs to be destroyed. Then we might think differently about Musk including that book.

As long as the aliens write decent poetry....

"Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes,
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts
With my blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!"
 
That is, until some alien race gets the idea from the book and decides that it is a good idea to build a new "Hyperspatial Express Route" right through Earth, and it needs to be destroyed. Then we might think differently about Musk including that book.

Better than sending out unsolicited nudes with a mix tape and our home address.
 
Hi, everyone! Just wanted to say I wrote a blog post on this topic to make it easily available to the public: https://chooselogicblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/10/spacexs-starman-really-happened/

Nice work. I wonder do you have any view on the point I raised in an earlier comment, about particles of some kind that appear to be 'floating' in the background of the spacecraft? There are some examples in this video,
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-MhAWdZQrM&t=227s
, between around 9 and 10 minutes in. The video compiler (Kelly White) captions this section 'Stars, satellites, space debris'. Some of the objects might be stars, but the directions and rates of motion are too variable for this to be the sole explanation. If they are bits of debris lit up by the sun, there seems to be an awful lot of it around!
 
Nice work. I wonder do you have any view on the point I raised in an earlier comment, about particles of some kind that appear to be 'floating' in the background of the spacecraft? There are some examples in this video,
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-MhAWdZQrM&t=227s
, between around 9 and 10 minutes in. The video compiler (Kelly White) captions this section 'Stars, satellites, space debris'. Some of the objects might be stars, but the directions and rates of motion are too variable for this to be the sole explanation. If they are bits of debris lit up by the sun, there seems to be an awful lot of it around!


They're probably not stars or satellites. They're almost certainly debris. You have to remember that the car is being unevenly heated by the sun, so some parts are cold, others hot. Also, the lubricants in the car, and the epoxy, rubber, etc on the car are largely water-based, or have water in them. When these are hit by the sun they can heat up and evaporate, then cool in space, causing them to appear like ice.
 
The car also wasn't particularly prepared beyond removing anything dangerous to the launch and anything Musk wasn't sure he wanted to launch into space. It's not going to have an encounter with a major body for centuries and not with one other than Earth for at least a thousand years, and the chances of it hitting Mars any time in the next eon is pretty tiny, so planetary protection isn't a consideration*. It would have all the moisture, gasses, fluids, microbes, dust, and other stuff a car somebody owned and drove would be expected to have.



*-There's actually a lot of backlash about this on social media, people think this was irresponsible not to sterilize the thing as if it were a Mars rover or something. However, it wasn't being sent to Mars or past Mars or anywhere near Mars. It's on a Mars transfer orbit, but not in a transfer window, meaning Mars isn't at the other end of its transfer. Also, rather than calibrate the transfer for an encounter, the rocket expended all of its remaining fuel for testing purposes, so even if Mars was there it would be a distant and fast fly by.
 
There's actually a lot of backlash about this on social media, people think this was irresponsible not to sterilize the thing as if it were a Mars rover or something
well it is flu season. what if an extraterrestrial ship sees the car and picks it up to study? could wipe out their whole civilization.
 
well it is flu season. what if an extraterrestrial ship sees the car and picks it up to study? could wipe out their whole civilization.

Interesting concept
Would germs, bacteria etc exposed to space survive enough to harm an alien species?
Perhaps a topic for a different thread.
 
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I


Interesting concept
Would germs, bacteria etc exposed to space survive enough to harm an alien species?
Perhaps a topic for a different thread.
Survival depends on what kind of germ. Apollo 12 recovered pieces of the Surveyor 3 probe and we found viable bacterial spores on it after several years. A more recent experiment on the ISS exposed less resilient bacteria to space, with varying exposure to the sun. All the sheltered samples survived, but the unsheltered ones were sterilized.

The car is full of enclosed spaces sheltered from the sun, and anything from Earth will have a diverse biofilm ecosystem on it, so there's likely viable bacteria all over it now, which could revive if back in a hospitable environment.


As for harming alien species... It's actually unlikely an alien would succumb to an Earth pathogen, or that a human would succumb to an alien one. Even on Earth, pathogens have a hard time jumping to novel hosts, and we're all made out of such similar things that we can't even tell if a random protein came from the most complex vertebrate or the most simple archaean, and it's unlikely even a carbon based alien with the same basic organic molecule types that we do will share the key proteins or cell structures to allow even a lucky mutation to infect them, let alone if they don't use the same molecule types as us or aren't even based on carbon molecules.
 
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I don't have a problem with the existence of 'debris' as such, but I'm puzzled by the direction and rate of movement. All the debris seems to be going in much the same direction - broadly 'upwards' in the camera's field of view - but at somewhat different angles and rates. Assuming the particles are close by, they appear to be moving at several meters per second relative to the car. I wonder what is the source of the motion. Since the particles are part of the same orbital 'package' one would not expect them to move very fast away from it (in a vacuum.) Electrostatic repulsion? Solar wind? Residual outflow of air from the car? I'm just curious. I wondered if the relative movement could be simply explained by rotation of the car itself within a 'cloud' of debris. But then it would be difficult to explain the variation in the apparent speed and direction of movement. Some of the particles are moving much faster than others. Also, although the car does seem to be gently rotating, the axis of rotation does not seem to be right to explain the predominant direction of the moving particles.
 
The car is full of enclosed spaces sheltered from the sun, and anything from Earth will have a diverse biofilm ecosystem on it, so there's likely viable bacteria all over it now, which could revive if back in a hospitable environment.

They would survive even after being deprived of oxygen whilst in space?
Pretty resilient. I wonder if there is research being done to use this for growing crops/food in space.
 
They would survive even after being deprived of oxygen whilst in space?
you can google about bacteria and viruses in space. (ii just did, pretty interesting). re: the tesla roadstar.. it would still have to be ok'd by NASA and their protocols. https://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/requirements
Brief Summary of Requirements for Orbiters and Flyby Spacecraft
.....
If the probability that the spacecraft will impact the surface of its target body is small, cleanliness requirements may be reduced
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Not sure if this treaty is still in effect, but contamination seems to be something the space agencies are very mindful of
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty was one of the few things the U.S. and the Soviet Union managed to agree on at the height of the Cold War. Among other things, it forbid both nations from bringing space microbes back to Earth, or spreading Earth germs to other planets. https://gizmodo.com/why-scientists-have-been-scared-of-space-germs-for-almo-1712562498
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Viruses are kind of complicated to explain. They need a living organism to multiply, but they don't "live" outside their host. Lack of oxygen doesn't affect them if they're already "dead", but time and temperature can harm them physically, so when they come into contact with another viable organism they don't come alive.

So, say, theoretically, the car goes through and orbits the sun and gets back to us, Earth. If it came back to Earth and landed relatively unharmed by the powers of science, could the car be driven once again?
 
The car also wasn't particularly prepared beyond removing anything dangerous to the launch and anything Musk wasn't sure he wanted to launch into space. It's not going to have an encounter with a major body for centuries and not with one other than Earth for at least a thousand years, and the chances of it hitting Mars any time in the next eon is pretty tiny, so planetary protection isn't a consideration*. It would have all the moisture, gasses, fluids, microbes, dust, and other stuff a car somebody owned and drove would be expected to have.
It's a good thing it wasn't my car being launched, or the space debris belt would have got a whole lot worse, what with all the sweet wrappers, old parking tickets, coffee cups, tissues and goodness knows what else floating out from under the seats. I reckon Elon probably keeps his motors in better condition.
 
Also, the lubricants in the car, and the epoxy, rubber, etc on the car are largely water-based, or have water in them. When these are hit by the sun they can heat up and evaporate, then cool in space, causing them to appear like ice.

Not exactly. The sun doesn't 'heat up and evaporate' the water, the zero air pressure causes the water to violently boil off into a gas. The gas then instantly freezes into chrystals, which is called Desublimation:

Definition: Desublimation is the phase change from gas to solid.
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Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/definition-of-desublimation-605011

So... does water Freeze or Boil in space?


But when you put liquid water in space — where it can no longer remain as a liquid — which one of these two things happens? Does it freeze or boil?

The surprising answer is it does both: first it boils and then it freezes! We know this because this is what used to happen when astronauts felt the call of nature while in space. According to the astronauts who’ve seen it for themselves:

When the astronauts take a leak while on a mission and expel the result into space, it boils violently. The vapor then passes immediately into the solid state (a process known as desublimation), and you end up with a cloud of very fine crystals of frozen urine.

There’s a compelling physical reason for this: the high specific heat of water.



Image credit: ChemistryLand, via http://www.chemistryland.com/CHM151S/06-Thermochemistry/Energy/EnergyUnitSpecificHeat.html.
It’s incredibly difficult to change the temperature of water rapidly, because even though the temperature gradient is huge between the water and interstellar space, water holds heat incredibly well. Furthermore, because of surface tension, water tends to remain in spherical shapes in space (as you saw above), which actually minimize the amount of surface area it has to exchange heat with its subzero environment. So the freezing process would be incredibly slow, unless there were some way to expose every water molecule individually to the vacuum of space itself.

But there’s no such constraint on the pressure; it’s effectively zero outside of the water, and so the boiling can take place immediately, plunging the water into its gaseous (water vapor) phase!
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Source: https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/does-water-freeze-or-boil-in-space-7889856d7f36
 
Not sure if this treaty is still in effect, but contamination seems to be something the space agencies are very mindful of

It is, but there's a lot of misconceptions about how stringent planetary protection is. Mars landers are sterilized better than a surgical field, but Mars orbiters not so much, and most other things not at all. Galileo and Cassini were sent "dirty" even though both had better chances of crashing on moons with subsurface liquid water than the Roadster has of hitting Mars. This played a part in the decision to crash both into the planets rather than wind them down for decades of low level magnetosphere studies they were capable of.

So, say, theoretically, the car goes through and orbits the sun and gets back to us, Earth. If it came back to Earth and landed relatively unharmed by the powers of science, could the car be driven once again?

Not at all. It's full of rubbers and plastic parts necessary for operation that will break down from UV exposure. Even on Earth UV eventually deteriorates these materials, but it'll be faster in space with no atmosphere overhead. Many of the electronics will probably be damaged by radiation, as spacecraft electronics are designed to resist that damaged and still many ultimately succumb to it anyway. The battery, if it wasn't removed (the roadsters radio and lights were running off the second stage's batteries, not the car's own) will be destroyed even by now.

The motor will probably be fine, as well as the frame and many parts of the drive train, though. It's not going to be irreparable, but it's going to be totalled, and by the time you get it road worthy again it'll be in that gray area of philosophy that asks when a thing has been fixed so much becomes a new thing and not it's original self anymore.
 
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you can google about bacteria and viruses in space. (ii just did, pretty interesting). re: the tesla roadstar.. it would still have to be ok'd by NASA and their protocols. https://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/requirements
Brief Summary of Requirements for Orbiters and Flyby Spacecraft
.....
If the probability that the spacecraft will impact the surface of its target body is small, cleanliness requirements may be reduced
Content from External Source

My wife has been bugging me to get my car cleaned for the past 3 weeks as it is still filthy after we took it on a holiday. Maybe I can tell her that my car is being considered for a NASA mission and it isn't part of the protocol to have an excessively clean car. I could tell her I can clean the car but I would then be decreasing it's chance of being selected for the mission.
 
My wife has been bugging me to get my car cleaned for the past 3 weeks as it is still filthy after we took it on a holiday. Maybe I can tell her that my car is being considered for a NASA mission and it isn't part of the protocol to have an excessively clean car. I could tell her I can clean the car but I would then be decreasing it's chance of being selected for the mission.
she isn't going to buy that. I was thinking Elon should have sent the family caravan out, so aliens could see what real (non-OCD) Earth life with kids is like... which may endear us to them as their kids are probably slobs too.
 
she isn't going to buy that. I was thinking Elon should have sent the family caravan out, so aliens could see what real (non-OCD) Earth life with kids is like... which may endear us to them as their kids are probably slobs too.

Good idea. Elon should have also included videos of kids throwing tantrums in shops and supermarkets inside the caravan, which I am sure is something the aliens will also have in common.
 
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