Things launched into space first must survive the launch, which as you can imagine is both loud and violent. Like all payloads, the Roadster needed to undergo sonic, vibration, vacuum, and other standard testing to make sure that it wouldn’t come apart during the launch and ascent and damage the rocket and that it would survive in space.
It was quickly determined the car needed to be stripped. After all, the only launch it was designed for was a stoplight drag. All the glass had to go, as did the battery. With the battery out, there was no need to keep the drivetrain in, either, so that went, too. Musk himself has been very open about prototype rockets tending to explode, and no one wants to scatter 1,000 pounds of lithium across the upper atmosphere. Other than the obvious weak points like glass, SpaceX engineers were impressed with the rigidity and durability of the Lotus-based Roadster in their tests.
One of the biggest roadblocks in my mind to space travel is first of all, the re-usability of the vehicle. It gets expensive if you have to basically build a new platform everytime.
The Space Shuttle was the first step, but reading what they had to do to get it up again, it sounds like they might as well have built a new one every time.
Even with SpaceX, we're still talking exploitation and not exploration of space, I know its a step to getting there, but its basically a freighter or school bus. But at least it sounds like its re-usable.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
I had no idea they were going to try this, but apparently they had a ship off the coast with a big net (I'm not kidding) and they were going to try and catch the fairing after re-entry. Close but no cigar this time though.
Unfortunately the reality isn't quite so dramatic as the gif:
"In the case of the system mentioned in the 2003 Air Force report above, a 6.1 m × 0.3 m tungsten cylinder impacting at Mach 10 has a kinetic energy equivalent to approximately 11.5 tons of TNT"
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Yeah, also as the article says, they're more of a bunker-buster technology. It would be like hammering a nail into a piece of wood. To get that sort of London-smashing power you need something that transfers the force of impact outward rather than straight down.
Ya, that was weird. I presume it is because NOAA is conducting chemtrail experiments and don't want to reveal the flat Earth through HAARP interference.
