Collaborate Disseminate
In an interesting step for anyone who follows electric car technology, the automaker Tesla has released a trove of information about its first-generation Roadster car into the public domain. The …read more Continue reading Tesla Claims To Have Open Sourced The Roadster
Wikipedia will be the second of three ‘libraries’ sent to outer space, but figuring out how to print the sum of human knowledge on a small disk required some serious technical innovation by the Arch Mission Foundation. Continue reading Inside the Plan to Print All of Wikipedia and Send It to the Moon
Hackaday readers are well aware of the problems caused by materials left exposed to the environment over time, whether that be oxidized contact pads on circuit boards or plastics made brittle from long exposure to the sun’s UV rays.
Now consider the perils faced by materials on the International Space Station (ISS), launched beginning in 1998 and planned to be used until 2028. That’s a total of 30 years in an environment of unfiltered sunlight, extreme temperatures, micrometeoroids, and even problems caused by oxygen. What about the exposure faced by the newly launched Tesla Roadster, an entirely non-space hardened vehicle …read more
Continue reading Lost In Space: How Materials Degrade In Space
Love it or loathe it, launching a sports car into space is a hell of a spectacle, and did a great job at focusing the spotlight on the Falcon Heavy spacecraft. This led [Rogelio] to wonder – would it be possible to snap a photo of Starman from Earth?
[Rogelio] isn’t new to the astrophotography game, possessing a capable twin-telescope rig with star tracking capabilities and chilled CCDs for reducing noise in low-light conditions. Identifying the location of the Tesla Roadster was made easier thanks to NASA JPL tracking the object and providing ephemeris data.
Imaging the Roadster took some …read more
Continue reading Photographing Starman From a Million Miles Away
The payload on the Falcon Heavy was Elon Musk’s personal Tesla convertible. Here’s how it was prepared to weather the harsh space environment. Continue reading How to Prepare a Sports Car for Interplanetary Space
What the Falcon Heavy means for the future of spaceflight. Continue reading SpaceX Just Launched a Tesla Into Space on the Most Powerful Rocket in the World
We’ve been having a lively discussion behind the scenes here at Hackaday, about SpaceX’s forthcoming launch of their first Falcon Heavy rocket. It will be carrying [Elon Musk]’s red Tesla Roadster, and should it be a successful launch, it will place the car in an elliptical orbit round the Sun that will take it to the Martian orbit at its furthest point.
On one hand, it seems possible that [Musk]’s sports car will one day be cited by historians as the exemplar of the excesses of the tech industry in the early 21st century. After all, to spend the millions …read more
Continue reading Are There Better Things To Hurl Into Orbit Than A Sports Car?
SpaceX just test fired the Falcon Heavy and the wait was so worth it. Continue reading Holy Shit: SpaceX Finally Test Fired its Falcon Heavy Rocket
The static fire is one of the last major tests before the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket since the Apollo era. Continue reading The Rocket That Will Take Elon’s Car to Mars Is About to Test Its Engines
One of my favorite types of science fiction character is found in the books of Ben Bova; a business mogul who through brilliance, hard work, and the force of personality drives mankind to a whole new level in areas such as commercializing space, colonizing the stars, battling governments, and thwarting competitors.
It is possible to name a few such characters in real life — influencing the electricity industry was George Westinghouse, automobiles was Henry Ford, and more recently Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. With Elon’s drive we may all finally be driving electric cars within 20 years and spreading out …read more
