Fun Things To Do With Your $200,000 Car: Blast It Into Outer Space.

SpaceX will try to launch Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster on new heavy-lift rocket, Spaceflight Now

"Musk told reporters in March that SpaceX would put "the silliest thing we can imagine" on the first Falcon Heavy flight. The company placed a wheel of cheese on the first flight of its Dragon cargo craft in an ode to the Monty Python comedy group. The Tesla Roadster weighs about 2,760 pounds (1,250 kilograms), measures nearly 13 feet (3.9 meters) long and spans about 5.7 feet (1.7 meters) wide, according to Car and Driver magazine. That's well within the Falcon Heavy's lift capability to go to Mars."

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. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2017

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. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2017

Keith's note: I totally get the playfulness with which SpaceX does many things. Its one of the things I really like about the company. Its often infectious - often disarmingly so - and helps to paint space as something more approachable than just launching expensive shiny things into outer space. Its even more fun to kid around when the company does things that NASA cannot do.

Elon Musk has been totally blunt when he comes to the complexity of launching the first Falcon Heavy and that it may well blow up. Other than instrumentation needed to control and monitor the rocket, it would be a risky proposition for anyone to put anything of value on the rocket as a payload. NASA has often flown inert ballast on rockets during early test flights to allow the rocket to behave under properly loaded conditions. The Shuttle often flew with big slugs of lead to balance payloads.

But I have to wonder if something a little more useful could be done on this first Falcon Heavy flight- like auctioning off the $200,000 Tesla Roadster and using the proceeds to fund a hundred or so cubesats that could be given out free to students with the caveat that they may become space toast. To a lot of people in America $200,000 is the cost of a house, several years of memory unit care for a parent with Alzheimers, or one or two full college educations. This is Elon Musk's decision of course. And while it does have a sort of daring, tongue-in-cheek, out of the box aspect to it, I am also a little disappointed. This is a chance to do something that really resonates with people. Instead a lot of people will see some rich guy throw his expensive car away in outer space or make a shiny red reef in the atlantic.

Too bad Elon couldn't put a Tesla SUV with fat tires inside a heat shield with a parachute and throw it toward Mars. He could even paint it red.

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