Musk's Red Tesla Roadster

SpaceX will launch its Falcon Heavy booster for the first time this afternoon (1:30PM to 4:00PM launch window). I will, of course, be watching it live. Here is a good website to learn more:

Any first flight of a new rocket is risky. Because of this, the payload space is generally filled with a dummy weight like a big tank of water to simulate the mass of an eventual satellite payload. But not this launch. Elon Musk has donated his personal, bright red, convertible, Tesla Roadster to the project and that is what is carefully mounted, just like a satellite, in the forward shroud of the Falcon Heavy booster now standing on Launch Complex 39-A at Cape Canaveral. Bev and I were at that same launch complex in 1969 to watch a Saturn rocket carry a manned Apollo spacecraft to the Moon.

If the launch is successful, his automobile will be thrown all the way to Mars orbit. It will carefully avoid actually hitting Mars to prevent contamination. Then steering rockets will fire to place it in a precise elliptical orbit around the Sun (like a comet) that will be stable for a million years). An instrumented crash dummy, dressed in a prototype Space-X spacesuit will be strapped into the driver’s seat.

Here you see an animation showing Elon Musk’s red car just after the rocket’s fairing (nose cone) has been ejected and the roadster is on its way to Mars.

If you are going to be a billionaire, you might as well do it right .... like Elon Musk.