Greatest engineering feat, at least in aerospace, I'll have seen played live for some time to come, until the next line of rockets SpaceX comes up with makes its appearance.

If Elon really wanted life to imitate art, he'd have sent up a '60 Corvette C instead of the Tesla. Heavy metal '81 and "Soft landing".......

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Two of the three main engines on the core rocket failed to relight causing it to crash in the sea. Even so two out of three makes additional missions much cheaper. Gary I never said they were planning to land on Mars. Please quit putting words in my posts.

Orbital dynamics are funny, Elon put the words in your mouth anyway. He isn't even claiming that the orbit he sent it on has the same inclination as Mars. As such it might never get much closer than the Earth does, at least in the next 10,000 years. What Elon should have said was the aphelion distance or the car would be within the range of the perihelion and aphelion distance of Mars' orbit.

To actually get near Mars to have to arrange your rocket to arrive at its orbit when it is at that spot in its orbit. From earth that is an about six month trip to get from the Earth's orbit out to Mars' orbit. You want to time your launch so that you arrive near perihelion to save fuel. As Mars takes about 2 years an orbit, launch windows open about every two years.

It seems now that the Tesla is going to join the Asteroid belt. Inter Martem et Jovem unam Tesla interposui (with apologies to Johannes Kepler).
Tullio

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The cruise to the asteroid belt is now considered to be an exaggeration. After recalculating the trajectory they are again estimating that Falcon Heavy capsule will reach it's apogee somewhere near the orbit of Mars but nowhere near the planet itself.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Ok here's some more info.

Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster

Cheers.

NASA is also tracking the car.

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SpaceX Completes Successful Launch, Narrowly Misses Catching $6 Million Nose Cone.

SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket Thursday morning.

But the hard part came next: trying to catch the rocket's falling nose cone with a big net on a ship in the ocean.

Cheers.

As fast as it was falling, I don't see how that net or that boat could have survived the impact if they caught it.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

If you mean the Mach 8 mentioned in the tweet, I think you may have missed the mention of the parachute later on? I know I miss stuff when I skim through stuff

Going by this I'd have my doubts whether that giant mitt would catch it safely without shredding it..!

"Going to try to catch the giant fairing (nosecone) of Falcon 9 as it falls back from space at about eight times the speed of sound," Musk wrote on Instagram. "It has onboard thrusters and a guidance system to bring it through the atmosphere intact, then releases a parafoil and our ship, named Mr. Steven, with basically a giant catcher's mitt welded on, tries to catch it."

My thoughts are parachute it down softly onto the ocean and retrieve it..

Speed by the time of catch should be low as the parafoil adjusts down to a stall speed, but a faster and more maneuverable ship with outriggers and a bigger net maybe needed (a few inflatable floats wouldn't hurt either in the cone) or they'll need adjust/improve the navigation software (or maybe a bit of both).

It's a bit like that they can land those reusable rockets on land fine, but they have problems doing the same on floating platforms out at sea still.

Cheers.

Going by this I'd have my doubts whether that giant mitt would catch it safely without shredding it..!

"Going to try to catch the giant fairing (nosecone) of Falcon 9 as it falls back from space at about eight times the speed of sound," Musk wrote on Instagram. "It has onboard thrusters and a guidance system to bring it through the atmosphere intact, then releases a parafoil and our ship, named Mr. Steven, with basically a giant catcher's mitt welded on, tries to catch it."

My thoughts are parachute it down softly onto the ocean and retrieve it..

Look up "parafoil"

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Is it similar to what lowered Curiosity onto the surface of Mars?

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

"parafoil"

Having seen a pic of the parafoil I do agree with Wiggo's comment, in time I think they will succeed in catching it..

I think Curiosity used a heatshield with a drogue chute and parachute. Then near the ground, they switched from parachute to hovering with rockets. While the whole thing hovered, it lowered the rover with a winch. Winch detached and the delivery thing rocketed away and landed/crashed somewhere else.

From what I read about the SpaceX fairings, they use small gas thrusters to orient the fairing to survive reentry. Then later on deeper in the atmosphere, a "parafoil" deploys and it has some degree of control on directing which way the fairing falls.

I believe they want the fairings to avoid touching the water. There might be some metal devices or components inside, or maybe to prevent water from getting in between the different layers of plastics and carbon fiber. I'm guessing, the less water that gets on it, the less refurbishment needed to reuse it.

Elon Musk projects Mars spaceship will be ready for short trips by first half of 2019.

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk told an audience at South by Southwest that his timeline for sending a space vehicle to Mars could mark its first milestone early next year.

The privately-funded venture, announced in September 2017, aims to send a cargo mission to the Red Planet by 2022. SpaceX's ultimate objective is to plant the seeds to put a human colony on Mars.

Cheers.

I know, find a way to send Putin, Trump and Kim to Mars and tell them to fight over that planet. The winner gets to stay there and rule over the robots and the other two idiots. I could add a few others to the list but I don't think the SpaceX capsule is big enough.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

A Falcon9 rocket is in the launch pad at Cape Canaveral ready to launch the Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite of NASA, which will search for exoplanets in other star systems. Launch should happen on Monday April 16, wit the usual caveats,
Tullio

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A Falcon9 rocket is in the launch pad at Cape Canaveral ready to launch the Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite of NASA, which will search for exoplanets in other star systems. Launch should happen on Monday April 16, wit the usual caveats,
Tullio

Just to add a bit more to that.

NASA's TESS spacecraft may find 1,600 new planets in the next two years.

Cheers.