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Commercialization

Starman Bids Farewell To Earth

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 7, 2018
Filed under

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

21 responses to “Starman Bids Farewell To Earth”

  1. Doc H. Chen says:
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    Congratulations to Starman’s solar system trip. May Hubble telescope one day see it from the deep space or future Webb telescope see it some where in our solar system..

  2. David_McEwen says:
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    What a great image. Although the old saying goes, “It’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey”, in this case, it truly is about both.

  3. ThomasLMatula says:
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    Now that needs to be on a T-Shirt 🙂

  4. Howard Ackrish says:
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    why is there no video from the car at the beginning of the final burn so we can see the car depart earth

    • Steve Pemberton says:
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      It’s not like in sci-fi movies where they light the engines and you see the planet that they are leaving immediately recede into the distance. In real life the burn merely adds additional velocity which enables the Tesla to continue moving away from Earth. But you only see that movement over time, i.e. by comparing photos taken several hours apart. It’s not something that you would be able to observe watching live video.

  5. Saturn1300 says:
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    The experts have weighed in. Not asteroid belt. 64 million miles from Mars in June. A few mid course firings and it would have made the Inspiration Mars mission ,I think, as I expected.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Early orbit predictions are necessarily made with few data points that are too close together. It’s not surprising that better estimates emerge as more data points are gathered.

    • fcrary says:
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      64 million miles is 0.68 AU. The _Earth_ gets closer to Mars than that, once every 26 months.

      • Saturn1300 says:
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        OK. A very large course correction. They need to slow down so Mars catches them.

        • Steve Pemberton says:
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          Probably better to leave it where it is to help silence the critics, who have pretty much run out things to complain about and are now hyping the possibility of Mars contamination. In the current orbit that apparently isn’t even remotely possible for centuries, and by the time it might pose a threat it will probably have already been recovered and will be sitting in a museum somewhere . Unless that’s prohibited by some future historical laws, in which case they can just nudge it if needed to avoid hitting Mars or its moons.

          • Saturn1300 says:
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            Not enough thruster fuel on board and no solar panels, power, antenna. Shortly they say only thing left is the aluminum frame, Radiation. I should have paid more attention to the material experiments on ISS to see if that was true. Nice to hear from you again.

            Yours Truly: Saturn, Saturn13

  6. Saturn1300 says:
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    NASA needs to stop SLS. Do a me too of SpaceX and bring back a modernized version Saturn-5. This will fix the SLS burning para chute problem. Add legs and bring the 1st stage back and land. It has a 150 ton payload to Leo. NASA does not need that much at first, so use a little fuel to land like SpaceX. This is an example of what Musk says to do. And bring back the glory years of Apollo as Pres. Trump wants.

    Yours Truly: Saturn, Saturn13

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Why should NASA waste any money on a new rocket? Leave that to industry and just focus on building science payloads for them.

      • Saturn1300 says:
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        Because the SLS parachutes will burn from the burning chunks of solid rocket fuel. If the cargo version destructs it will spread huge, up to 100lbs of burning solid fuel over a large area. The last one impacted, burned around 50 cars in a parking lot.
        They could use FH. Can you find jobs for all the people that would be laid off? They knew about this before SLS started. Musk said he could do the Moon with FH, but does not recomend it. Wait for his BFR I suppose. We can’t wait.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        I’m shocked to agree with you on this: shocked because, not so long ago I’d have said that, due primarily to gargantuan costs, big lifters are simply a task that must be undertaken by the nation as a whole.

        My view on this has changed.

        In fairness though a LOT has changed, including the rapidly maturing private market for lifting services.

  7. SpaceHoosier says:
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    I’m still grinning from ear to ear since watching the launch with my 14 year old two days ago. Very rare these days when both of us can agree on what is ‘cool.’

  8. Chris Owen says:
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    A photo of the Earth as a ball taken by a non-Government camera? That surely is a first?

  9. Terry Stetler says:
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    There were photos posted to Twitter of the burn taken from the ground. Visible from CA to AZ

    https://twitter.com/tactica

  10. billinpasadena says:
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    Depends on tracking station availability (and cost!), antenna orientation for burn attitude, etc.

    • fcrary says:
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      Also battery life. For good tracking and orbital determination (the non-publicity point of transmitting), you want see the vehicle to move along its trajectory. Broadcasting for one hour out of every three would triple the observed arc before the batteries ran out. (No, I don’t know what the actual numbers are; that’s just an illustration.)

  11. Roger Jones says:
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    Remember that time NASA launched a car into space? And then landed it? On the Moon? And then drove it around the moon?