And “the bill” apparently included providing publicity – just like mom’s (All American) apple pie that went up as weight for testing other US rockets. (Yes, my sarcasm runneth over.)
And no major science payload would mean that MikeinNH is incorrect about “full of scientific equipment gathering giga-quads of data.” I’ll leave you two to sort that out.
That doesn’t seem to have been the case for the first Saturn V test (Apollo 4 mission)
NASA is much more risk averse than they were back then. The SLS will almost certainly not carry expensive science instruments that cost a lot more to build now that during Saturn V times.
The instruments Mike mentioned evaluated the launch and ascent of the Falcon Heavy. Any future use is of secondary importance.
Yes, and apparently to the point of letting private entities do the heavy lifting (pardon the pun).
Then the instruments sound scientifically irrelevant to being sent to Mars (like the Roadster).
It’s not being sent ‘to Mars’. It’s going into a solar orbit that reaches out to the orbit of Mars. No Mars rendezvous planned.
And the Roadster isn’t the fastest car yet. Remember the moon rovers?
Ok, my imprecise wording is admitted.
Yet it doesn’t change my point if I was more precise with
“Then the instruments sound scientifically irrelevant to being sent to Mars [orbit] (like the Roadster).”
(And it is likely recognized by some people that Mars or Mars orbit can be spun as a step toward asteroid belt mining.)
Roadster isn’t going to mars.
And it’s SpaceX’s money. I assume they can spend it how they want. $10k per pound is one tenth of what the space shuttle program cost per launch.
Based on the link below…It’s either something like the Roadster (which is cool), or concrete blocks (boring).
I was thinking about amending it to fastest production car…
After it swings around the sun it may surpass the lunar buggies speeds.
Correct, and I’ve already admitted my imprecise wording.
Yet my point doesn’t change if I was more precise with
“Then the instruments sound scientifically irrelevant to being sent to Mars [orbit or beyond] (like the Roadster).”
Correct, they can spend it how they want, and if they want to spend it on a publicity stunt rather than something aspirational/inspirational connected to science, that’s their choice. (Like it is my choice to NOT see the stunt as ‘cool’.)
And bashing the Space Shuttle cost doesn’t change the nature of the stunt. It does seem irrelevant to my point in bringing up cost, which was that the money could have been spent on COOL science.
From SpaceX:
From Wiki:
According to the 2002 Guinness World Records, Apollo 10 set the record for the highest speed attained by a manned vehicle: 39,897 km/h (11.08 km/s or 24,791 mph) on May 26, 1969, during the return from the Moon.
Note that Apollo didn’t have to reach escape velocity (25,020 mph) to get to the Moon.
I was listening to a radio station the other day and a caller mentioned, they just want to drive the liberals crazy using all that fuel. He was referring to something else but that statement could apply to this launch. Since the electric car saved so much fuel, it was spent in a different way.
cant recall why musk wants to be in rocket business. does he think his company can do it cheaper than nasa? what is his business model? launch satellites? mars mission? moon base?
So spite might be part of the motivation? Being spiteful doesn’t seem like a good thing.
I do not think it was spite. I think it was a way to get people to think…Was it IBM’s slogan? “Think Different”
Wanting “to drive the liberals crazy” doesn’t seem like aspiration or inspiration to encourage people to think.
Did they mention Elon is an immigrant !
Two reasons:
He likes science.
Profit
Nothing Elon said relates to that. Made up by some radio caller, the least-reliable source of information on the planet.