UKC

Granted when you test a rocket you have to give it some payload (usually a block of concrete) which you leave in space somewhere and the general detritus litters the place up but I see that as a necessary part of the process, it has an honourable purpose and the litter is worth the purpose.

Sticking a f*****g sports car up there is pretty much putting an advertising hoarding on top of Helvellyn, not only is it actual, physical pollution but it is mental pollution, crass commercialisation of a romantic void, defilement of an idea all for the vanity of one very rich man.

Please don't do it again.

In reply to gravy:

If an alien did actually find it, they would piss themselves laughing, a car with wheels powered by batteries.  Good advert!

 

In reply to gravy:

...or it's a very cheap way ($100,000 for a Tesla) to make the entire world aware of your space business?

Plus, maybe he wasn't that keen on his car!

In reply to broken spectre:

Or an unpleasant commercial invasion of a wild and remote place? like dropping a maccy-d logo at the south pole?

In reply to gravy:

All the particles in that Tesla vehicle ultimately came from that same void, which is littered with rocket casings and other junk, including huge amounts of radiation. It's hardly littering a rare and pristine environment.

In reply to Pan Ron:

It is littering and the intent matters - just the same way a flag at the south pole means one thing and a giant plastic big mac would mean another.  I'll never see them but, to me, one is more polluting than the other because it is less honourable.

In reply to gravy:

Remote? Hardly. Vaccum accounts for most of the universe after all, it's sort of near everywhere.

In reply to gravy:

We all know that Elon Musk is essentially a real life Bond villain, so who was in the space suit?

In reply to gravy:

It really is impossible pollute or litter space. Its just too big. Even galaxies are absolutely tiny compared to space.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

- Douglas Adams

In reply to davidbeynon:

I was wondering if there was actually a serious purpose.   AFAIK SpaceX have a new spacesuit design they want to use for manned missions, this could have been a chance to test it in space.  Perhaps the dummy inside it was full of sensors.

In reply to gravy:

Well at least it wasn’t festooned with Tibetan Prayer Flags ey?

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Quite.  They’re using every chance they can to do landing experiments with expendable first stages, and they’ve been experimenting regularly with the fairings after separation.  They seem keen to use every opportunity to test stuff and get more data.  Launching the car to Mars also tested, for the first time, their ability to restart the second stage engine after a multi-hour coast.

Although I think the full accoustic and vibration environment of launch is harder to simulate accurately than the effects of being in open space - and their suits aren’t intended for use in open space, only for protection against depressurisation inside the capsule.  But they will have to be launched every time they’re used.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Maybe it wasn't actually a dummy? The whole rocket/roadster thing could be an elaborate diversion while Musk bumped-off one of his multitude of mortal enemies.

Has Jeff Bezos been seen in public in the last 24 hours?

 

In reply to Andy Johnson:

I read somewhere that it's Branson.

In reply to gravy:

 

Relative to the size of it's orbit round the sun, it is like a piece of litter about a micrometre across in the whole Lakes. Just not worth getting upset about. If you want to get upset, you should worry about the carbon footprint of the rocket, not a pretty cool advert for an environmentally friendly car.

In reply to gravy:

But the whole thing was part of a commercial venture so I really can't see the problem. Plus, as others have pointed out, space is big.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Isn't there a ethics side to this though? A sense of decency and respect for unexplored areas - be it on Earth, or, in this case Space.
You of all people should understand this.  Yes, it's infinitesimally small, but isn't it essentially Elon Musk using this as an advertising gimmick?  No better perhaps than Red Bull and some of the antics they get up to?
On one hand, I personally doff my cap for what he's done: He's put a car in space - what a hoot!  On the other hand, I'm a little bit saddened.  There is now a Human made object in space, albeit one of thousands, that is there primarily to feed one persons ego.  I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with that. 
On a climbing level, you could say it's the equivalent of putting a bolt on Grit/Cloggy, etc. In the grand scheme of things it's meaningless, but to us climbers it means a great deal...

 

In reply to gravy:

I don't think is so much littering as a very expensive, very high tech variation on pissing on a lamppost. I don't suppose Musk got where he is today by being modest but the whole thing seems to be in very bad taste if nothing worse. 

In reply to DaveHK:

 

I just can’t understand this view.  What an inspiration to young people considering STEM careers.  This has done more for involving peope in science than all the outreach I have done and could ever do.

It was the car or a concrete block.  As there are precisely zero negative consequences to using the car, to me it would be bad taste to waste the opportunity to inspire people, by launching a concrete block.

Environmentally, using an old car (undoubtedly stripped of its batteries etc) is far friendlier than using a newly made custom concrete block.  Would it have appeased your sensibilities if the car had  been crushed first?  Then it would have been more environmentally friendly than a concrete block, and not open to interpretations such as yours.

To people somehow thinking space was pristine and has now been desecrated, take a look at what’s already up there.  Thousands of lumps of crap from an anti sattelite weapons test, nuclear fission reactors from RORSATs leaking radioactive crap and waiting to reign down radioactive hellfire on Earth centuries from now, discarded boosters, dead TV broadcasting satellites parked in supersynchronous orbits now their job (of broadcasting mind numbing crap to people’s idiot boxes) is done.

In reply to gravy:

It seems a bit of a waste to me. If you have to send something useless into space, surely it wouldn't have been too hard to persuade Donald Trump to go in it?

In reply to gravy:

It's irrelevant junk. It won't fall to earth, isn't going to land on mars and pollute a planet, doesn't carry a nuclear reactor so there were no unncessary human risks at launch...  In a few billion years it'll be gone along with everything else. In a universal scheme of this it's meaningless. 

On the plus side if it makes electric cars 1% cooler with a few peteol heads then that's a net gain.

 

In reply to wintertree:

 

Nor me.  I guess it's just an unfortunate trait of human nature that when someone pulls off something fabulous like this (and with a certain panache), someone else feels obliged to piss on it.

In reply to gravy:

I think you're wrong, for three reasons.  One, I am fairly sure this isn't without scientific purpose - I'm sure that suit is filled with sensors that are giving us useful data that a concrete dummy load couldn't.  And two, this has been an inspiration both to petrolheads who might now be looking at electric cars and young people who are now excited about this area of science - I've now had several long conversations about rocketry and the risky nature of research with A level and GCSE students, and they all started with the car.

But actually, the most interesting thing about this is that it's going to be a more permanent record of humanity than almost enything else we've ever done.  Fast forward half a billion years - we will most likely have gone for one reason or another, and all that is left of us will be a thin layer in the geological record that's a bit radioactive and oddly plastic-y.  Everything in LEO will have degraded and fallen; I suspect the geostationary satellites might still be there, but you can't tell much from them about us expect that we were here and we were using them to record or transmit data.

The Voyager and Pioneer probes will be long, long gone.  To a newly-arisen earth-based form of intelligent life, or a visiting alien life who find it, that Roadster will tell them what shape we were, what we did, what we tried to achieve.  I'm not sure how confident I am in flash memory holding out for that long, but there's a chance they might be able to find out what we liked to listen to.

And if Elon had the foresght to lead-line the glove box to protect the organic matter inside against cosmic radiation, there's now a fairly good chance that the last document remaining of humanity will be H2G2.  That's cool with me.

In reply to gravy:

Musk makes an apology for his vandalism of space
.

youtube.com/watch?v=rWVGupqvCL8&

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

think of all the Germs on the car - will they provide a record of life on Earth or give an alien a bad cold?

 

Be funny if we found life on earth originated from a Vogon Elon Musk sending a car our way just because they could  (Or, even odder, a race of robots that made their machines out of living stuff)

I disagree with this "it's an inspiration to STEM students" rubbish - launching the rocket and the landings and technology demonstrated is an inspiration to STEM students maybe but sticking an advert into space is an inspiration to Trump-ite sales and marketing students not STEM.

What next a Mc chicken nugget banner on the moon?

I agree it is the pollution of an idea it sullies the romantic nature of "space" and if I were young and dreaming of the impossible this would have flattened the adventure. Ideas and dreams matter to the young.

I tell you what would be a lot more impressive than sending the car to space would be getting it back and cleaning up the litter he left!

In reply to Robert Durran:

To you it might be tiny but I get upset when I find a sweet wrapper in the wild and it is as much the pollution of an ideal as the physical space.  It seems shocking to me that this frontier should be turned into an advertising hoarding.

In reply to duchessofmalfi:

I’ll tell the children I know who are super excited about a car in space that they’re excitement is rubbish then.  

I feel sorry for people with a need to denigrate the achievement of others through such preposterous arguments.  How sad the world must look through such eyes.

 

In reply to gravy:

The release of the total CO2 embodied in you making these posts probably has more negative effects on the planet than that sweetie wrapper.  I doubt you get upset when you post on here, but it’s also having an effect in the Wild.  

In reply to gravy, duchess of Malfi - I agree that dreams and ideas are important to the young.  I can't think of much in the last 25 years that's equally inspiring - not only did someone decide something would be good and interesting - they went out and did it!

 

But God help them if they decide it should be fun too! 

 

 

In reply to gravy:

I hate sweet wrappers in the wild too. I get far more upset about them than the odd car orbiting the sun out beyond Mars somewhere.

 

 

In reply to Robert Durran:

I just don't understand the hero worship of Musk wrt dumping a used car in space! if I dumped a car on the top of a remote hill I'd be a villain akin to green laners. Sure the rockets were neat but the dumped car is, well, a dumped car and an advert in space is something I find very distasteful.

In reply to duchessofmalfi:

The two things are totally different. If it were feasible I would quite happily see all humankind's waste dumped in an effectively permanent orbit round the sun.

 

In reply to duchessofmalfi:

The two things are not comparable in the slightest. 

Im struggling with the idea of it being pollution tbh (on an elementary and cosmic basis) Pollution suggests that it is going to have some adverse effect somewhere, it isn't.

This then leads to the issue of intent.....so what? He decided to strap a car to his rocket, whats the problem? I cant help but think "what a guy"

And the "macci D's" banner on the moon is a pretty poor comparison, no-one cares about Mcdonalds, people care about what Elon Musk is striving for, and every credit to him, we need more of him.

 

In reply to wintertree:

Consider how much more of an inspiration it would have been to those young people if Musk had sent something representing them rather than himself into space. 

In reply to gravy:

Musk is doing what people have been saying will be the advent of actual consistent space travel for decades, which is commercialising it and trying to build it into an enterprise. Yes yes we all know the evils of capitalism blah blah, but you can't tell me it hasn't made many things more efficient.

If there were a few more billionaires doing what he is doing then we would have another space race (Branson's Galactic springs to mind), but with more money and tech at our disposal and a greater aim. The last time that happened we put a flag on the moon a decade after the founding of NASA with the combined computational power of significantly less than your average disgruntled UKC posters smartphone.

I go back and forth on Musk's ideas (I'm looking at you, hyperloop...), but the man is one of the very rare breed of billionaires who has the vision to try and do things like this, and time and time again Space X achieves things which absolutely astound me.

I should have known that UKC is divided on the issue of whether the man actually dreaming hard enough to attempt to make space a little more accessible with companies he has founded using money he has made is "littering space". Morons.

In reply to DaveHK:

Like what?  A giant YOLO banner?

The man himself is the inspiration.

In reply to GoneFishing111:

It's an exact comparison for me - and he'll be forever linked in my mind with the sort of antisocial space invading scrote that leaves dog turds in bags in bushes, throws fag ends out of cars windows, drops macdonald wrappers 10 yards from the bin, tears up the countryside for a "laugh" in his 4x4, thinks the rest of us are impressed with his car stereo, and believes that anything is game for making money.

Space is a place in the physical world and a place in the imagination - this has sullied both. We certainly do not _need_ more of him and like Trump a lot less would be highly desirable.

In reply to DaveHK:

Aye!

In reply to gravy:

I thought he'd turned away from being totally money focused and was now keen on massive projects to improve the future?

In reply to GoneFishing111:

Where did this hero worship come from? It's like applefandom on speed! I wondered if this elucidated something: "Been fascinated by mountains for as long as i can remember, but not actually climbed one.". Maybe, when you actually do climb a mountain and find a pile of cheap lager cans and disposable bbqs on the otherwise pristine summit you'll think, "Hooray for Jean-François van Boxmeer", or maybe you'll think littering scrotes, I'll pick that up and dispose of it nicely.

In reply to DaveHK:

My electric car represents my children’s future to me very well - a chance to live without filth in their lungs and a chance to live without ever rising atmospheric CO2.

The Roadster in space represents all that as well as the hope that we are entering an era of accessible and productive Spaceflight. 

In reply to gravy:

So we need less people pushing the boundaries of what is possible with renewable energy and tech in general? Tesla, SolarCity, Hyper-loop, The Musk Foundation,The Boring Company.

With his overall ambition of helping humanity (albeit whilst making him rich), you want less of this, all because of a car floating around in space.....?

No need to get personal, im just trying to figure out your idiotic statements. Its not hero worship? Where are you getting that from?

In reply to gravy:

Yes, perhaps by sticking them on the next SpaceX flight.

 

 

In reply to wintertree:

To me it represents the loss of an ideal and the start of the crass and commercial exploitation of the last wilderness and frontier that the human race will ever have. I'd children's future to have less advertising and more romance and adventure.

In reply to gravy:

The thing about frontiers is that they move, if they never move then they lose their power to inspire. The thing about space is that even if we move that frontier more rapidly every day for the remaining lifespan of the human race there will always be new and more challenging frontiers to conquer.

 

edit: and the notion that this is the first crass commercialisation of space is just silly. We have a whole network of satellites whose primary aim is to inject The Geordie Shore into homes all over the globe

In reply to gravy:

Microbe contamination is no argument.  This will have been subject to sterilisation in line with COSPAR, and barring asteroid impact it's not going to hit anything anyway.

He had to launch something as a dummy payload.  Do you think the Eagle's landing stage that we dumped on the moon is similarly litter?  It was just as necessary as the dummy load here. 

Would you really rather he sent a ton block of concrete or a load of barrels of water?  I'm far happier he launched something that is making people get enthused about spaceflight and engineering.  I had to tell my students about Rosetta and Philae, and Curiosity, and Huygens.  They come to tell me about the Roadster.

This isn't hero worship.  I have strong reservations about Musk as a man, and both his politics and workplace practices concern me.  I suspect he is a quite unpleasant person.  But that's not the same as lauding his achievements.

In reply to DaveHK:

He did! The idea of a person cruising along top down on a road trip represents the American dream.  It's the coolest thing he could have done  and makes the statement "From now on, space exploration is going to be cool and fun.  Nasa engineers with slide rules are no longer running the show "

Every American Teenager understands the symbolical freedom.

The fact that it's a Tesla is secondary to the real message, it's a red sports car with the top down and the music playing.

In reply to gravy:

And that is the point RD is making. This is nowhere near as polluting as one sweet wrapper in the whole of the Lakes. Think of it more as a few molecules of material from the sole of your boot scuffed on a rock in the Lakes.

In reply to gravy:

You are aware of the hole you're digging yourself here?
(The old classic ...) You talk about the pristine outdoors you love, how do you get there, in your pollution belching internal combustion engine powered car, per chance?

In reply to gravy:

Space really doesn't care.

In reply to Jimbocz:

What about non American teenagers? Musk is no inspirations to me. Never has been, likely never will. I live most of my life without being aware of him.

Inspiration is all about interpretations.

What he did is futile, almost as futile as my addiction to climbing hills "just because they are there!"

I am not upset about the car, in fact little in this PR stunts truly upsets me. Just more carbon in the air. All this stuff, weird objects in space, camming devices in cupboards and rollex watches on skeleton will not matter much when humanity has destroyed itself anyhow.

Friday pms make me feel cheery!

In reply to Hooo:

Or possibly the whole cabinet.

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

This seems unlikely to me. Only landers get sterilized, and the Tesla was only ever intended to orbit Mars, not impact it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection#COSPAR_recommendations_a...

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Its also considerably bigger than the inner solar system.

 

 

In reply to French Erick:

But here's the thing; inspiration to one man won't be to another. For me, Musk shows a breath of fresh air against a wall of archaic companies splurging out the same junk in the sole name of profit. Sure, Musk is obviously bothered about profit because otherwise shareholders get pissed and the company folds. But he's making things anyway that are bringing existing ecologically safer technology to the masses by making it interesting, appealing and something that the average person would want to own. I think a lot of people do want to lessen their environmental impact but are put off by the sanctimonious and evangelical greenpeace style environmentalists, and the fact that to go from a high performance and fun car to a Prius is a bit of a sacrifice. A Tesla on the other hand? No sacrifice at all. Solar panels look crap, but some roof tiles that look the same as your normal roof? Awesome. How about storing that energy so you can actually use it? Even better. The same with SpaceX. Granted, at times there are some uncharitable parallels you could make with fictional megalomaniacs, but even if there are some personal vanity elements in there, the fact is, he's reduced the cost of space travel, both financially and environmentally (by re-using boosters etc). He's driving technology, and the uptake of technology. That is inspiring.

Similarly, if a car being launched into space has made a whole load of kids inspired to get into science and engineering, using Musk as an environmental role model, then I'm all for it. Far better him than some oil or existing large multinational vehicle manufacturer exec as a role model. He's actually trying to reduce environmental impact. Compare that to VW who want to look like they're reducing environmental impact. The two mindsets are worlds apart.

I am truly astonished by the hero worship here, I don't think I've ever witnessed this before, it's like the second coming, people seem to be having a nigh on religious experience from this, which to me is still littering, vulgar advertising a desecration of a wild place.

Maybe my awe and wonder is turned down* or maybe I just can't see the halo or maybe I just don't give a monkey's about sports cars.

Whatever it is I don't get it, the Muskovite's here just come across as deranged and drugged!

 

* Actually I don't think my awe and wonder is turned down, it is just reserved for awesome and wonderful things, like space, and not reserved for littering place up with old cars for the sake of advertising.

 

Time to lock myself in a dark room and try to come to terms with the fact the world seems to be a more f*cked up place than I ever imagined!

 

Tell me - if you were impressed by this, were you impressed by this:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/nov/16/environment.broadcasting

I've got a feeling the fans are one and the same...

In reply to gravy:

I've got a feeling you are much mistaken.

 

In reply to wintertree:

I wonder how much CO2 the launch released? And how much the regular launches they seem to be planning for the future will release? 

 

In reply to gravy:

Really? I don't see it as some second coming, religious infatuation. Simply saying that he stands for a different set of values to the norm and therefore is a good role model; someone who dreams, and delivers, while trying not to ruin the planet while doing so (I'm aware of the environmental impacts of batteries and generating the energy to store in them). Rather than sounding like you're personally attacking everyone who has a different opinion to your own, have you looked at any of the reasons, or do you believe we should all go back to living in caves and communicating in grunts? The modern world is around, it's not going away. Surely trying to minimise the environmental impact of the consumerist society is surely better than trying to tell everyone that they must give up every morsel of comfort in their life and live in purgatory. Because I'll let you in on a secret; the latter suggestion will get you ignored by the majority who you need to influence to inflict change.

Also, with the space argument; how do you think the ISS is currently being re-stocked and supported, and how do you think satellites get into orbit?

In reply to gravy:

Sense of perspective time

 

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=size+of+the+omniverse&&view=de...

In reply to gravy:

I think when you apply everyday concepts like littering in the context of the solar system you need to take into account just how big the solar system is compared to the earth never mind a car.

These guys mapped it out the relative size and spacings between the planets in the Nevada desert.  They needed to go to the desert because in the scale model we are talking golfball size planets with a car ride to get to the orbit of the next one.

https://www.space.com/30610-scale-of-solar-system-amazing-video.html

In reply to gravy:

Nope, not impressed.

I can understand someone being disgruntled at the seemingly grotesque display of egotism in what he did. It doesn't bother me, i think a little of that is needed for progress.

Im astonished at your astonishment and at your repetitive rhetoric regarding hero worship.

 

In reply to gravy:

 

Speaking of littering, SpaceX are the first people ever to routinely recover all the Earthboubd stuff from a launch and not drop it all over the oceans or the deserts.  They’re still perfecting this, but no doubt they will get there.  Future plans (BFR) include recovery of the 2nd stage instead of discarding them in orbit, as is common now.

Funny how outraged you are when the balance from their work will be +1 car in space, -100s of boosters, chemicals, batteries, electronics, heavy oils and the like in the sea.

Perspective.  It’s great.

In reply to gravy:

An artefact that pretty much represents our best technology to date, that will almost certainly outlast humankind... seems like a pretty cool thing to launch. In a few million years it may well be all we are remembered for. 

In reply to gravy:

I just read EM harbours ambitions to detonate thermonuclear weapons over the Martian poles (in an attempt to terraform it). I think gravy may have a point!

In reply to gravy:

So you've said this again and again, but you've not engaged with any of the counter arguments or answered any of the questions put to you.  Let's try just one: given that a dummy load was necessary as proof of mission, would you have been more or less unhappy with it being a ton block of concrete?

In return, I'll happily answer yours:

No, I thought it was utterly unacceptable.  The reason is that there was no need to take the land rover over the peat bog.  There was a need, however, for a dummy load in Falcon Heavy.

In reply to DaveHK:

Dislike away all you like, but deep down y'all know that's a real issue. But never mind because look! A shiny thing! A shiny thing in space!

In reply to DaveHK:

 

Only in the minds of the ill informed.  A quick estimate suggests that global Spaceflight is responsible for perhaps one millionth of the global CO2 emissions.

Your personal lifetime emissions could well be more than this single flight’s.  

No, actually.  But never mind - maths, evidence, facts.

Also, as you continue to ignore, a concrete mass simulator would have embodied more CO2 release than the repurposed shell of a car.

Wider perspective - SpaceX are at the forefront of moving to methane based rocketry, and of generating methane from atmospheric CO2 which becomes carbon neutral when combined with solar power.  I heard a rumour their CEO is also big on solar power.

Less than the total CO2 embodied by the rockets of their computers, whose business they will take.  Less because of significantly reduced manufacturing (direct reuse not single use) and because of their class leading engine performance.

Honestly your arguments are so badly thought out, why don’t you come out and tell us what you really think instead of dressing it up in totally flawed points.

In reply to wintertree:

You know it's not a binary thing right? It isn't a straight choice between total condemnation or unqualified admiration. It's perfectly reasonable to admire elements of this and think others crass or worrying. Nuance is the word.

In reply to DaveHK:

I do indeed.  However, I think the points you and a couple of others are making are so utterly out of proportion that they’re laughably absurd.  I have been making my argument for that with reasoned views based on things like evidence and numbers, but I’ll just drop down to calling it absurd given a lack of engagement with reason and logic.

In reply to wintertree:.

I don't think I've actually made any arguments, just asked a few questions and stated a few opinions. Does seem to have provoked a response though.

 

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

I'd be happier with a block of concrete.  Intent matters.

I'd have been much happier with a school science project, an artistic endeavour or some other expression of respect for the shared ownership of the domain.

In reply to DaveHK:

I do have a bad habit of reading between the lines when opinions and questions all align to an apparent view/argument.

In reply to wintertree:

Fair dos, I've got a bad habit of annoying people with smart arse comments  

So would I probably, but it's just not worth getting fussed about.

 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

bit closer to home and less polluting is our one https://www.york.ac.uk/solar/  come cycle it sometime.

In reply to gravy:

Should have sent up a cairn.

In reply to gravy:

There's surely a school of thought that would argue a battery-powered convertible tearing many times faster through the solar system than it ever could on earth, blasting out Bowie as it goes, is as arty as it gets

In reply to nufkin:

as well as creating the first Space Motoring Museum

In reply to nufkin:

Indeed, one of the most expensive pieces of art ever created.

Mind you, if gravy had had their way, there could have been a live stream of a concrete block in space.  Surefire candidate for the Turner prize!

In reply to gravy:

What do you think of the meat and potato pie that is in Space?