Space trash is forever
INDIGNITY VOL. 3, NO. 153
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH DEP'T.
What Have We Learned About Elon Musk?
ON FEBRUARY 6, 2018, Elon Musk launched a car into space. The red Tesla Roadster, with a dummy in a space suit at the wheel, was attached to the cargo stage on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, on its first successful flight. After lifting off from Cape Canaveral, the rocket directed its automotive payload in the direction of Mars, sending it into an orbit where it remains to this day, and for the indefinite future.
The space Roadster came to mind because I have been reading a fair amount of Musk coverage lately, prompted by the release of Walter Isaacson's new Musk biography and a long Ronan Farrow piece in the New Yorker, and so far I haven't seen anyone bring it up. The space junk may be semi-permanent (at least the frame of the car, anyway), but the attention the space junk got was fleeting. Five years after Musk's colossal feat of marketing and/or littering, no one even mentions that it happened.
How would anyone be able to remember it? There is too much stuff about Musk for anyone to keep track of. He has taken Steve Bannon's notorious advice to "flood the zone with shit," and his zone reaches halfway to the asteroid belt.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to INDIGNITY to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.