SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch Delayed By Atmospheric Wind
You know when it’s just too windy to bother stepping outside? The incredible SpaceX Falcon Heavy project has been delayed by two hours – because of atmospheric gales.
It’s a bit gusty in the upper atmosphere, according to a Tweet from Elon Musk. The winds at high altitude are about 20 per cent stronger than the Falcon Heavy’s upper limits of capability, meaning that if it was launched anyway, it would probably be torn apart or tossed back to Earth like the swiftly-binned lid from a can of baked beans.
The flight was due to begin at 6.30pm UK time (1.30pm US EST), with a webcast starting 40 minutes before, but that has been put back to 8.45pm and the webcast, which you can watch via the video above, should now kick off soon.
EDIT: The launch has been given the green light for 8.45pm, or 3.45pm CET.
Falcon Heavy is twice as powerful as the next-most powerful rocket in the world today. It’s claimed to be able to lift 63.8 tonnes of payload into low Earth orbit; about the same as five New Routemaster London buses. If you want to launch a bus or five into space yourself, via Falcon Heavy, the price is a mere $90 million, although the maximum payload for a Mars mission is only 16.8 tonnes.
Elon Musk isn’t sending any buses. Nor is he sending ordinary test ballast, like concrete. He’s sending his own old Tesla Roadster. He was quoted widely as saying that using concrete or steel blocks “seemed extremely boring.”
The Roadster’s stereo will be playing David Bowie’s Space Oddity on repeat, for a journey that plans to take it to an elliptical Mars orbit for what Musk hopes will be something like a billion years. We love the track, but if it was us we might want to take a fully-stocked MP3 player too…
Comments
Luckily no reliability issues line a McLaren Honda
“Obviously literally shooting a car to Mars is a bad idea. Don’t do that. Unless you like fun”
This needs to be too comment
Not the only delays Elon has to deal with
TeslaRoadster🔋 is gonna be mad.
Oooooo 😆
shots fired
Next time play the Space Odyssey theme.
If a tesla roadster is playing music in space and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Good question! There’s obviously no particles in space, so, it’d be impossible to hear it anyway XD
In space, no one can hear you play music
Hey, if he doesn’t want it when it comes back down, shit, I’ll take it! Just name the price.
It’s not coming back down. Its on its way to Mars.
Stupid idea from a stupid man , instead of thinking how to respect production times on the model 3 he launched the new flamethrower toy and is trying to launch the roadster in the space … Ok nice work fail-on musk xD
Wonder who’s laughing now, since he just launched the most powerful rocket in the world, landed 2 maybe 3 of the large boosters from the edge of space down to earth, and has just made a new avenue for cheap space flight for very heavy payloads and even mars. Fail on musk my ass
I am no tesla fan by any means and the model 3 is just pathetic at this point in time.
But try to do something like he has achieved and then you can talk bullshit like you do.
And imo space exploration is much more important than cars. These two companies have nothing incommon except for the owner.
the song in the trailer is Life on Mars not Space Oddity
yay
Fake!
Everyone knows that the earth is flat….
(I thought it was obvious but no, I am not serious….)
….
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