We all see the Innovations and how far as Humans we have come when it comes to developing 4 Wheelers. But one of the biggest achievements of Humanity has been sending a car to space, I am sure you would have heard of it. A first-generation Tesla roadster became the first car to be sent into space and the special thing about that car was that it was the same car that Elon owned, yes it was the very first-tesla product and the very first roadster. It functioned as a demo payload for the falcon heavy, the test flight was conducted on the same day I turned 17 i.e. the 6th of February 2018 and you can be sure about the fact that we all witnessed history being created that day.
A lot of people questioned it initially, like “you serious about sending a car to space?” they all questioned things like, whether it was really safe, whether it would fall back on earth and yes they were good questions, but Elon being the intelligent person he is, had thought about all this beforehand, he knew and had studied about all the consequences of sending a car into space and when he was completely satisfied with the safety and what it would result to, then he gave the mission a green flag.
Now the car has become the artificial satellite of the sun and it goes by the name of “Starman”.
But you must be thinking that why did they necessarily had to launch a car? There literally can be 1000 other things that can be used as dummy payload, so why the car? Well, the idea was suggested by Elon musks and he said that the falcon heavy would be carrying the silliest thing one could imagine.
The car was permanently mounted on the rocket in an inclined position above the payload adapter. Then some structures were added around the car for the mounting of cameras.
In the driver’s seat is a mannequin in a SpaceX pressure suit. If you have noticed the position of its hands, you will see that its right hand is on the steering wheel and its left hand is resting on the left window sill. Even the radio in the car had the song “space oddity” being played on loop.
The launch of the car was live-streamed for over 4 hours with different angles showing the roadster with the earth in the background.
And of course, we are living in the era of memes so it’s obvious that countless memes were made on this incident, even manufacturers made jokes and parody videos on it, and this ultimately gave tesla all the attention it wanted.
A few folks questioned whether the roadster would become a part of the space debris but all of those possibilities were answered by Elon.
There is still a 6% chance that the Roadster might collide with the earth and a 2.5% chance with venus but that’s the same as all the other space debris.
SpaceX plans to launch someday in the future a small spacecraft that will tag along with the roadster and take some pictures, eagerly waiting for it to happen!
So, everyone, that will be all for this time, I trust you liked this one, if you did then do share it with your friends and do consider subscribing to Motordrift for more such content in the future.
Till then
Ciao
