this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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The ballast could just as easily have been university student design team projects and he would have been doing a ton of good for the world, but instead he decided to waste all that fuel and a whole car for publicity. "Efficiency".
On the first flight of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket, a university satellite was the payload. Not only did the launch fail in just the first few seconds, but the payload crashed back. Landing in the shipping container it arrived in. First launches of rockets do not have good track records. Risking a silly car was arguably more fun than the equally useless "mass simulators" used on most first launches. If it were my satellite, I would not have wanted it on the first Falcon Heavy launch.
To give an otherwise unfunded project the chance to go to space, however slim, is worth far more than a tesla roadster with an astronaut mannequin, and costs far less. What was their satellite design going to do on earth?
Plus if it blows up, you could still say your satellite blew up on launch. Not the worst story there is to tell.