Ground control to Major Tom. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on. Check ignition and may God’s love be with you.
Hero to all in the universe Elon Musk will be sending a Tesla car to Mars while playing David Bowie’s Space Oddity during the entire trip.
If you thought Musk couldn’t possibly get any cooler, a joke he made on Twitter is becoming a reality.
Earlier this month the tech inventor extraordinaire made a gag on the social media site about SpaceX’s first unmanned flight to Mars.
He wrote:
Falcon Heavy to launch next month from Apollo 11 pad at the Cape. Will have double thrust of next largest rocket.
Guaranteed to be exciting, one way or another.
Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit.
Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.
Considering Musk made reference to a Blondie song, I am surprised Debbie Harry won’t be singing his sports car into space.
Although Musk was clearly having a laugh he has actually decided to go with the entertaining idea because why not have fun when you are sending rockets into space!
A brand new cherry red electric Tesla sports car will indeed be sent to Mars as it is carried inside the Falcon Heavy, a new megarocket that will be the most powerful operational one in the world.
The car is yet to be released to the public but of course Musk made sure he had one free for the honour of visiting Mars.
Posting photos of the car inside the rocket on Instagram, he wrote:
A red car for the Red Planet.
Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring.
Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel.
The payload will be an original Tesla Roadster, playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit.
Well that really is far from boring!
One lucky tourist even got a sneak peek of the rocket while visiting NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre on Boxing Day.
Twitter user Emiliano C. Diaz de Leon was on a tour bus when he spotted the Falcon Heavy rocket and its rather bizarre payload being moved into a building.
It is due to take off for its mission in January from the same launch pad as the Saturn V Apollo 11 moon mission .
This mission is private company SpaceX’s most ambitious to date and if Musk pulls it off, it will be legendary.
Although he has said that it will launch next month, the date is not set in stone and the eager CEO is known for getting ahead of himself.
I am just wondering if a copy of A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy has been snuck into the car’s glove box?
