To be accurate, I believe they call the the dummy "Star man", just if you wanna edit the title
SpaceX successfully deploys the Star man
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: SpaceX successfully deploys the Star man
#22What happened to the core booster did that return?
It suffered a rapid unscheduled disassembly, unfortunately
Re: SpaceX successfully deploys the Star man
#23Center core is gone, didn't land successfully. Well it was a test and most of the flight succeeded https://twitter.com/kimballclark/status/960986447770656768
This could refer to the signal, not the actual rocket. They might have lost it, but it isn't certain yet.
Re: SpaceX successfully deploys the Star man
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless I'm mistaken, it's not on a trajectory out of Earth orbit currently. It is in a parking orbit, where it will sit for a few hours and then will reignite and will be set on a trajectory toward "martian orbit". IIRC currently they are testing (or proving depending on how confident they are) that they can have the second stage sit for several hours in space before reignighting.
I think you're correct. At stage 2 cutoff, they were showing a speed of ~26,000 km/h, which is approximately orbital velocity, not escape velocity.
Although I'm not fully correct. Mr. Musk just tweeted this:
>Upper stage restart nominal, apogee raised to 7000 km. Will spend 5 hours getting zapped in Van Allen belts & then attempt final burn for Mars.
Re: SpaceX successfully deploys the Star man
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, no, once the 2nd stage cuts off the trajectory is mostly fixed and we know what orbit it is in. There are, I believe, two more small burns that will be done to adjust the trajectory, but these are more of an adjustment to what kind of Martian transfer orbit it is in. It already has the hyperbolic velocity to leave Earth's orbit, and enter solar orbit with an apogee at the same distance as Mars. In 6.5 hours…
I hope we see more images of Starman, driving his car with the Earth shrinking behind him.
Here you go. A live stream of Starman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6M&feature=youtu.be
Re: SpaceX successfully deploys the Star man
#26The Starman has his own live stream: https://youtu.be/aBr2kKAHN6M
Re: SpaceX successfully deploys the Star man
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's a Martian transfer orbit, albeit without Mars at the other end.
Meaning it could have reached Mars, they just chose not to?
Meaning that they didn't launch at the right time to arrive at Mars, due to where Mars is in its orbit currently. It'll pass through the imaginary circle around the sun which is Mars' orbit, it's just that Mars will at a different part of the orbit at that time.
But actually, it seems they decided to just empty the tanks and get as much delta-v as possible, and it'll go all the way into the asteroid belt as a result.