He did it. Holy shit he did it. Elon Musk, the One True Star Boy, launched a fucking car into space.
When Elon Musk, CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, announced that he would be putting his own original Tesla Roadster on top of the very first Falcon Heavy test flight to act as ballast, everyone thought he was joking. And then pictures started showing up of the car being loaded into the payload bay of the rocket.
The video of the capsule opening up starts around 41:25:
And now, he’s gone and done it. This is Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, floating in outer fucking space. It’s incredibly surreal to see it just, well, floating there. Above all of us. Complete with its passenger, a dummy named Starman who will presumably send telemetry about the heavens back down to Earth.
The infotainment screen, helpfully, contains the familiar refrain from the Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy:
That is, of course, helpful when staring directly into the abyss of the universe. And just for fun, I love this clip of the two Falcon 9-based boosters landing in perfectly synchronized fashion, ready to be refurbished and re-used:
The Roadster will eventually be pushed into a solar orbit, where it’ll probably be the last car to ever exist after humanity has successfully annihilated its own planet.
One day, when the aliens find this single last remnant of our once great and vast civilization, they will be very confused.
UPDATE: And here’s a live view of the Tesla as it orbits Earth: