Elon Musk Isn't Joking About Sending Tesla Roadster To Mars, Has Pictures Of Car On The Rocket

Someday, we would really like to get inside the mind of entrepreneur Elon Musk. He has come up with some audacious ideas and is already working on realizing them. Take for example the giant battery pack for the Australian outback. Then there¡¯s The Boring Company. Now, this.

Early December he tweeted about putting a Tesla car on the Falcon Heavy and launching it in orbit around 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.

¡ª 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.

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2017

Most, including us, thought that he was either kidding us, drunk, or both.

He wasn¡¯t.

Now has put out pictures of the cherry red Tesla Roadster in the payload fairing of what is probably the Falcon Heavy rocket. Oh, and that¡¯s his own personal Roadster in the pictures. For those who don¡¯t know, the Falcon Heavy is the new reusable rocket being developed by SpaceX and can put nearly 64 tonnes of payload in a low earth orbit. In the reusable configuration, it will put an 8-tonne payload in the geosynchronous orbit.

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.

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Dec 22, 2017 at 10:47am PST

And there¡¯s a challenge if anyone is up for it - Anyone who can find it can keep it.

Yes

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 24, 2017

Jokes and shenanigans apart, what the scientific community may be wondering why there isn¡¯t a useful payload onboard. It¡¯s not every day that a rocket is being launched towards the red planet. But having an expensive customer payload also means a bigger loss if something goes wrong, and with 27 engines all firing at once, there¡¯s a good chance it will. With a car as a payload, the loss minimises.

Come January, a cherry red Tesla Roadster will (hopefully) lift off on one of the largest modern day rockets.