Anyone else PISSED at Elon Musk for literally blasting his TESLA out of this planet?

Initially I was stoked about it. There is a certain bad-assery in launching a car to space and having all this pop culture references inserted in the whole project... Now I am worried. Space debris is a thing and it is just adding up to it and there is still no way to collect it... maybe some other space geeks with money will start sending their stuff into space too, just for the lols. And then there´s laws. Space has practically no regulations so where are the limits if launching a car with no practical use is ok? Who is going to set the rules and why them? If we are going to take space exploration seriously, sending a car into space isn´t the best thing to do.

The car was a test payload, safer than humans in it's first flight. What would you have used instead?

A telescope. There are already a lot of them, but hell, better than a car.

A telescope. There are already a lot of them, but hell, better than a car.

A telescope. There are already a lot of them, but hell, better than a car.

They needed a cheap payload, as there was high chance of failure - would Elon rather lose his Tesla or a billion pounds worth of telescope?

The launch was a test flight. Putting an expensive telescope on it would generate huge negative publicity if the rocket failed - they have a good probability of failure as Musk testified.

Putting a Tesla on it is a publicity coup for both companies, Space X is now a household name and Tesla gets the bragging and advertising rights for having successfully launched the first production car into space and escaping earth's gravity.

Tesla got unprecedented positive global advertising coverage for next to no cost. Genius.

I won't debate the advertising innovation and success of the whole thing. It even got my grandfather talking about electric cars. But we are talking about space. Do we really want it to become one more medium for private organizations to get some word of mouth?

Initially I was stoked about it. There is a certain bad-assery in launching a car to space and having all this pop culture references inserted in the whole project... Now I am worried. Space debris is a thing and it is just adding up to it and there is still no way to collect it... maybe some other space geeks with money will start sending their stuff into space too, just for the lols. And then there´s laws. Space has practically no regulations so where are the limits if launching a car with no practical use is ok? Who is going to set the rules and why them? If we are going to take space exploration seriously, sending a car into space isn´t the best thing to do.

Ok, I understand that. I get it. But why not make it something with some type of meaning? Some new records, new recordings of messages, etc. If you´re sending something into space, why not make it count?

Ok, I understand that. I get it. But why not make it something with some type of meaning? Some new records, new recordings of messages, etc. If you´re sending something into space, why not make it count?

Ok, I understand that. I get it. But why not make it something with some type of meaning? Some new records, new recordings of messages, etc. If you´re sending something into space, why not make it count?

This isn't in an earth orbit so space debris isn't really the issue.

But it would have been good to also include some low-cost student experiments.

Posted from TSR Mobile