If you are trying to get children to be excited about STEM and STEM careers, watch the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Rocket. Actual footage starts at the 8 minute mark. When the side boosters return to Earth at the 37:30 mark, is a beautiful and exciting moment.
The excitement and enthusiasm shown by the entire staff at Space X, is palpable. The SpaceX staff explain what is happening in plain English, without technical jargon.
What is Space X?
In a nutsh
ell, SpaceX manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. According to its website “The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.” It should be noted, that in 2002, when the company started, no one there had ever built a rocket. By 2010, they were the only private company to ever return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit. Since then SpaceX has been using it’s Dragon spacecraft to make deliveries to the International Space Station.
What is the Falcon Heavy?
The Falcon Heavy, is the world’s most powerful rocket (by a factor of 2!). This is not a one and done rocket, if all goes well, they will be ready to use the rocket to put satellites on the next mission in a few months, according to CEO Elon Musk (Space.com).
What was on board Falcon Heavy?
on Heavy needed to release a real payload in order to fully test the rocket. This payload is special and a lot of fun. They launched Musk’s Tesla Roadster
complete with a passenger, a spacesuit wearing mannequin known as Starman. Starman will coast through the radiation heavy Van Allen Belts, before restarting the engine to travel toward Mars. This will eventually carry the car and Starman into an orbit around the sun, about 248 million miles from Earth. (space.com). This, according to Musks’ Instagram post, will consist of the roadster, while playing Space Oddity by David Bowie, on a billion year elliptic orbit. No work yet on if Starman’s real name is Major Tom.
Also included in this payload is an arch. “An Arch is a “5D, laser optical quartz storage device” that is meant to be able to survive even in the harsh conditions of space, built by the Arch Mission Foundation. The foundation’s goal is to preserve libraries of human knowledge for interstellar travel (and to protect information in the event of calamity to Earth itself). Embedded on this disc, is Issac Asimov’s Foundation series. This series of books inspired the Arch Foundations to create the discs. If you want to check out some footage from Starman’s point of view yesterday, check out this video.If you look carefully you will see a mini version of the roadster on the dash of the car.