
a problem that is set to worsen as more nations and companies venture to the Moon and beyond
Iron Sky
Scientists mistook Elon Musk's Tesla roadster for an asteroid in a debacle that highlights the problem of tracking near-Earth objects. Discovery of the suspected asteroid was announced in the Minor Planet Electronic Circular on January 2. However, the entry was swiftly deleted when space boffins realized it was actually the …
As someone put it to me - possibly here, in which case due credit to the OP and apologies for forgetting who they are - Werner von Braun must be happy wherever he is because now when someone says "that Nazi rocket guy" they won't be thinking of him.
Nah Mush is just the wannabe Nazi rocket guy.
Von Braun was the real Nazi rocket guy who used contentration camp victims as workers and didn't care what the chemicals they were working with did to them. Nor did he care about firing his rockets at my father. Such a lovely guy that built NASA for the Yanks.
Trump’s border czar .. using Texas ranch for mass deportations
Tesla's new corporate motto - work makes you free!
> Tesla's new corporate motto - work makes you free! (emphasis added)
In case others missed it, that's a loose translation of the German Arbeit macht frei, the "slogan" over Nazi concentration camp gates.
That's a bit much, even for me, and I am not a Musk fan by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly neither funny nor appropriate, especially as we remember the liberation of Auschwitz.
Musk, to me, at least, is just a blowhard juvenile edgelord provocateur who dotes on attention, without a sense of history or decency, who happened to make a couple of lucky guesses on technology. I'll hold off on anything further until evidence presents itself.
> I'll hold off on anything further until evidence presents itself.
Like his Nazi salutes followed by his Nazi joke routine, his support of the AfD ( aka. Nazi 2.0) party, or the range of antisemitic posts on his Twitter stream ?
Admittedly, that sort of behavior does make it difficult to reserve judgment but it's still more consistent with performative attention-seeking.
Whether it's based upon any sort of ideology is difficult to tell.
The four letter N-word gets tossed around with great abandon, sometimes accurately, but at other times not so much, which only tends to deprecate the enormity of the crimes of the Third Reich.
I'm still reticent but, as you point out, evidence mounts.
You made me do it:
From a purely functional and scientific standpoint, there’s very little practical benefit in launching a normal car (or most terrestrial vehicles) into space. While SpaceX famously sent a Tesla Roadster on its 2018 Falcon Heavy test launch, that flight was primarily a combination of a marketing coup and a way to demonstrate the rocket’s capabilities with an “unconventional” test mass. Here are a few considerations that show why it typically isn’t a great idea:
[... detailed analysis skipped ...]
Summary
Generally Not a Good Idea: From a rocket engineer’s perspective, launching a car into space doesn’t serve any significant scientific or functional purpose.
Exceptions (e.g., Publicity, Test Payloads): If your mission is strictly to generate media buzz or test a rocket under real launch conditions, sending something like a car might meet those objectives.
Better Alternatives: If the goal is scientific or commercial, a more purpose-designed satellite or test article is typically the better (and cheaper) choice.
In short, it’s only “worth it” in very niche circumstances—like demonstrating the capability of a new rocket and creating a viral, headline-grabbing moment. Otherwise, most space missions prefer cargo with a tangible return on investment.
What is really beyond comprehension is how he was permitted to send this piece of junk up in the first place given that the entire purpose was publicity.
It just added to the every growing collection of rubbish humans are dumping in space with no scientific or commercial gain.
The self-absorption indicated by pointlessly adding his roadster to the burgeoning population of space junk has just been exceeded by his proposal yesterday to rename the English Channel to “the George Washington Channel”. The "richest man in the world" seems to think he owns it (and, obviously, the near space surrounding it).
& all this is barely a week into the new regime!
I was rather saddened that Columbia (The country not the shuttle) caved in so quickly, I was looking forward to the howls of protests over coffee price hikes.
Icon - I don't drink coffee.
Musk's proposal to "rename the English Channel to “the George Washington Channel”
The Benedict Arnold Channel perhaps? He probably had the foresight to see where it all was going end and took an early mark.
About as daft as a PRC online activist suggesting Lake Superior be renamed Lake Xi Jinping although one might contend that Lake Winnipeg is in a way already named after that august chap who we are forcefully reminded definitely doesn't crave hunny.
At least today I learnt that la Manche is "the Sleeve" by reason of its shape which strikes me as having the virtue of being uncontroversal.
I believe the North Sea was the German Sea until a little unpleasantness near the beginning of last century.
>What is really beyond comprehension is how he was permitted to send this piece of junk up in the first place given that the entire purpose was publicity.
It was a test launch, normally you would launch a piece of space-grade concrete. It's in a sun orbit so no real danger to Earth.
That's what I was thinking. Why delete "objects" they detect but then realise are man-made? Just give it a classification noting that it's man-made. It's still a NEO object after all. Why do they want a separate database of all man-made objects which are further out than local orbits? Do they have some weird fetish over the "purity" of their data? It would make more sense, and possibly give them more kudos, if they simply mapped and tracked anything and everything, with relevant classifications where known.