Advertising and renewed interest in space exploration
Posted by
Chris in Tampa on 2/10/2018, 9:03 pm
They needed a test payload. They could have had something that fell back down to Earth, but this was the more inventive route. A great advertisement for Tesla of course, which Elon Musk owns. I think the biggest positive for it was drumming up interest in space exploration. This was a huge step to manned missions beyond the ISS, whether to Mars or the Moon. The amount of exposure this got was incredible. With it's orbit, there really isn't much to worry about. Astronomers will probably get all the details, if they don't have them already, to track it. It's closer to home around the Earth where we've got a lot of debris, with hundreds of thousands of very tiny pieces.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris
With hundreds of millions of dollars spent developing the Falcon Heavy, the cost of a Tesla of this type was very little. But it was his own private car anyway:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster
Think about the cost if Tesla wanted a 30 second Superbowl ad. That would be over $5 million. The equivalent advertising value here for worldwide exposure, for now and for awhile to come, is incalculable. $100 million maybe? Maybe a lot more?
If they had to create a test payload, that would have cost something. Less, but something. There was a really reasonable chance that everything was going to blow up, so they couldn't add a satellite worth tens or hundreds of millions.
The space industry is kind of getting a backseat lately to everything else. It kind of needed something for people to start paying attention again. Some people are questioning whether the US should continue with the ISS program later into the next decade. Getting people tuned in to space milestones, like this one by a private company, is really helpful right now. |
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In this thread:
SpaceX Falcon Heavy Test Flight at 1:30pm EST on Tuesday, Feb. 6th, from Cape Canaveral -
Chris in Tampa,
2/6/2018, 8:04 am- Call me a spoil sport - Beachlover, 2/10/2018, 1:39 pm
- Advertising and renewed interest in space exploration - Chris in Tampa, 2/10/2018, 10:03 pm
- Last pic of Starman in Roadster - cypresstx, 2/7/2018, 9:26 pm
- Exceeded Mars orbit and kept going to the Asteroid Belt - cypresstx, 2/7/2018, 6:49 am
- Success - Chris in Tampa, 2/6/2018, 6:07 pm
- Re: SpaceX Falcon Heavy Test Flight at 1:30pm EST on Tuesday, Feb. 6th, from Cape Canaveral - Chris in Tampa, 2/6/2018, 8:20 am
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