“The Tesla will likely impact the Earth within a few tens of millions of years,” says Hanno Rein of the University of Toronto.

“It will have a lot of close encounters with Earth initially,” Rein says. “A bit later, it will also have close encounters with Venus and Mars. During every close encounter, it will change its orbit a little.”

“The probability of a collision increases with time, because the collision rate is relatively constant,” Rein explains.

“I did a quick estimate that Earth collides with several Roadster-size NEOs every year, and such collisions are usually unremarkable,” she says.

“I would think that the most probable end is collision with the sun,” she says. “And the second most probable end is collision with Earth, as is the case for NEOs."

“It's possible that some debris could survive entry. It would get very hot but is also coming in so fast it might not have time to all melt,” says Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “I think bets are it would all melt, but definitely not a sure thing.

pic.twitter.com/ZeuKm5n7NB

— Flat Earth Society (@FlatEarthOrg) February 7, 2018

“It certainly is interesting to see the shift of focus in space programs from official government organizations to privately-run organizations,” Pete Svarrior, a moderator on the society’s website, wrote in a blog post.

pic.twitter.com/ZeuKm5n7NB

— Flat Earth Society (@FlatEarthOrg) February 7, 2018

“I would like to appeal to everyone, Round Earther and Flat Earther alike, to exercise more caution when approaching online content,” Svarrior wrote, going on to suggest that (grab a pen because you’ll want to write this one down) everyone should “Exercise critical thinking.”

Article was originally published on The Verge.

“Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring,” Musk said in an Instagram post in December, “so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel.”

“Space Exploration Technologies is authorized to conduct … [a] flight of the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) transporting the modified Tesla Roadster (mass simulator) to a hyperbolic orbit,” the FAA permit said.

“The payload will be ... playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit,” Musk said in December.

“No company has ever launched a private payload beyond geostationary orbit before,” Berger said, referring to a roughly 22,500-mile-high orbit above Earth. “This [Hohmann transfer] orbit is critical to understanding how Musk plans to sell the rocket and what its flight, after all these years of waiting, means for the aerospace industry.”

Aiming for first flight of Falcon Heavy on Feb 6 from Apollo launchpad 39A at Cape Kennedy. Easy viewing from the public causeway.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 27, 2018

Guys... are you ready!? #FalconHeavy LAUNCH DATE!

February 6th, with a backup on the 7th.

Launch time is 13:30-16:30 EST (18:30-21:30 UTC)#ItsHappening

— Chris G - NSF (@ChrisG_NSF) January 26, 2018

And please remember, this is the NET (No Earlier Than) date. It is the plan right now, but it is subject to change as all launch dates are. Remember, too, there's a Falcon 9 launch before this that needs to happen first. https://t.co/Ud7Z9IY8Oj

— Chris G - NSF (@ChrisG_NSF) January 26, 2018

He's so worried that he thinks we have to get off Earth and grow into a multi-planet species as soon as possible, according to an article posted by blogger Tim Urban called How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars. Musk's thought is quite straightforward. Perhaps by the time the next huge asteroid heads our way, we'll have the equipment to protect the planet or redirect the space rock. But if it's something a bit more disastrous, like a neighboring star exploding, we may all get vaporized. 



Musk says we certainly can't afford to just wait around and find out.In his article, Urban provides us another way to think about it: Visualize Earth as a hard drive, and every single species is a word document saved on that hard drive. The hard drive has already been crashed at least five times, and each time it misses a giant piece of those documents (species being vanished). So you can reflect the human species as an extremely valuable document generated on that hard drive: “Now—if you owned a hard drive with an extraordinarily important Excel doc on it, and you knew that the hard drive pretty reliably tended to crash every month or two, with the last crash happening five weeks ago—what’s the very obvious thing you’d do? You’d copy the document onto a second hard drive.”
That's precisely why Musk is so hell-bent on Mars — it might turn out to be 
humanity's backup drive.

“We cannot comment on classified missions.”

“For clarity: after review of all data to date, Falcon 9 did everything correctly on Sunday night,” Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX, in a statement sent to CNBC. “If we or others find otherwise based on further review, we will report it immediately. Information published that is contrary to this statement is categorically false. Due to the classified nature of the payload, no further comment is possible.

Since the data reviewed so far indicates that no design, operational or other changes are needed, we do not anticipate any impact on the upcoming launch schedule. Falcon Heavy has been rolled out to launchpad LC-39A for a static fire later this week, to be followed shortly thereafter by its maiden flight. We are also preparing for an F9 launch for SES and the Luxembourg Government from SLC-40 in three weeks.”

“Falcon Heavy now vertical on the former Apollo 11 moon rocket launchpad,” he wrote on Instagram on Thursday. “At 2,500 tons of thrust, equal to 18 Boeing 747 aircraft at full throttle, it will be the most powerful rocket in the world by a factor of two. Excitement on launch day guaranteed, one way or another. Hold-down test fire next week. Launch end of the month.”

“Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring,” Musk said in December. 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.”

“There's a lot of risk associated with Falcon Heavy,” he said during the 2017 International Space Station Research and Development Conference. “Real good chance that the vehicle doesn't make it to orbit. I want to make sure to set expectations accordingly.”

“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,” Musk originally posted.

Might be a surveillance satellite.

Mission to Mars

“It’s 2017, I mean, we should have a lunar base by now,” he said during his IAC presentation. “What the hell is going on?”

“The most important thing... is that I think we have figured out how to pay for (BFR),” Musk told a packed auditorium at a global gathering of space experts in Adelaide. “Which is to have a smaller vehicle, it's still pretty big, but one that can... do everything that's needed in the greater Earth orbit activity.”

“I feel fairly confident that we can complete the ship and launch in about five years,” he added.

“Once you are out of the atmosphere, it would be as smooth as silk, no turbulence, nothing,” he said. “There's no weather... and you can get to most long-distance places in less than half-an-hour. If we are building this thing to go to the Moon and Mars, then why not go to other places on Earth as well.”