[DeTomaso] NPC: Tesla in space
Larry-Ohio Time Corp
Larry at ohiotimecorp.com
Mon Feb 12 14:13:33 EST 2018
If the SpaceX <https://newatlas.com/falcon-heavy-launch/53258/> Falcon
Heavy is the world's most powerful rocket, then the Tesla Roadster that it
shot into interplanetary space holds the record for the fastest car in
history. This cosmic convertible will orbit around the Sun once every 1.6
years, but how long will it continue to do so, and what will be its fate?
Will it still look as pristine a billion years from now as it did in the
videos beamed back to Earth? Probably not.
At the moment, there are five US spacecraft speeding out of our Solar
System, never to return. Billions of years from now, when our Sun has turned
into a red giant and engulfed the Earth in nuclear fire, the Pioneer,
<https://newatlas.com/voyager-40th-anniversary-retrospective-gallery/50744/>
Voyager, and <https://newatlas.com/new-horizons-pluto-flyby-nasa/34777/>
New Horizons probes will still be traveling through our galaxy like a
quintet of robotic Odysseus's.
Even back in our system and revolving about our Earth are satellites that
will still be around for many millions of years. For example, one
Earth-orbiting satellite, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAGEOS> LAGEOS-1,
is a passive laser reflector satellite that will not only remain circling
our planet for 8.4 million years, but will remain functional for most of
that time.
<javascript:void(0)>
With a track record like that, it looks as if the Tesla Roadster that
rocketed into space on February 6, 2018 will be cruising happily among the
stars as a permanent monument to the early days of commercial deep space
travel. It's a nice thought that the Starman mannequin driver and his cherry
red ride will still be around long after the pyramids have crumbled to sand.
Except that's not going to happen. In fact, the Starman and the Roadster are
in for a very unpleasant time and may not be in very good shape after a few
years. And their lifespan, while huge by human standards, may be rather
limited.
At the moment, the Falcon Heavy second stage and the Roadster attached to it
are in an orbit that
<https://mobile.twitter.com/planet4589/status/961394843648954368> Jonathan
McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has recalculated
from Elon Musk's rather generous
<https://newatlas.com/spacex-images-starman-asteroid/53301/> rough estimate
of a few hours after liftoff. According to McDowell, the second stage is a
Hohmann transfer orbit, which is most economical orbit in terms of energy
for going from one place to another.
<javascript:void(0)>
Where Musk estimated that the second stage was circling the Sun at a
distance between 91 million mi (150 million km) and 240 million mi (390
million km) with an inclination of 29º to the ecliptic, McDowell calculates
that its orbit is between 92 million mi (148 million km) and 158 million mi
(255 million km) with an inclination of 1.1º and a period of about 1.6
years. This puts its farthest distance from the sun just beyond the orbit of
Mars.
The popular idea is that the Roadster will orbit the Sun for hundreds of
millions, if not billions of years, but that isn't the case. The second
stage and Roadster are now essentially a
<http://www.science20.com/robert_walker/will_elon_musks_cherry_red_tesla_roa
dster_orbit_for_a_billion_years_falcon_heavy_test_launch-230358> near-Earth
object (NEO), much like the asteroids that space agencies keep an eye on
just in case a large one is going to hit the Earth.
One thing that marks NEOs is that they don't have very long careers. They're
interplanetary jaywalkers with all the hazards that implies. Planets and
asteroids in circular orbits stay out of each other's way and are relatively
stable, but NEOs, and the Roadster, are in eccentric orbits that cross the
orbits of the planets. This makes their trajectories very unstable.
<javascript:void(0)>
The second stage will cross the orbits of Earth and Mars and its trajectory
will certainly be perturbed by Jupiter's gravitational field, so there is a
small chance that it might strike Earth or Mars many thousands of years from
now, though it's so small that it will burn up in the atmosphere. Another
possibility is that it might get flung out past Jupiter or inward past
Venus. It might even be propelled into the Sun, as happens to many
near-Earth asteroids after a few tens of millions of years. The orbital
mechanics are very complex, so it's difficult to predict, but the upshot is
that the Roadster won't be roaming the Solar System for as long as its
neighbors.
Another problem is that with the Roadster so close to the plane of the
ecliptic, it's in danger of being struck by cosmic debris. There is a very
small chance that it might be hit by a large object like an asteroid, but
the greater threat is from micrometeoroids, which over the millennia will
hit the car time and again. Each of these will cause small and not-so-small
amounts of damage, until it could one day look like it's been shot at by a
cannon filled with sand and gravel.
But the much greater problem is that the Roadster isn't a purpose-built
spacecraft. It's a production electric car, which means it's as suitable for
surviving the environment of space as a chocolate Easter bunny in a
convection oven.
<javascript:void(0)>
<javascript:void(0)> The Roadster passing the terminator
We're used to stories of interplanetary spacecraft functioning long past the
predicted end of their service life. Mars rovers expected to operate for 90
days are still rolling after many years, and the Voyager probes are still
working 40 years after their launch. Even the defunct machines, like the
<https://newatlas.com/kepler-recovery-emergency-mode/42756/> Kepler Space
Telescope, can be expected to be around for many millions of years in a
relatively intact condition. Why not the roadster, then?
The answer is very simple. Space engineers have spent decades studying how
to build spacecraft and especially which materials to build them out of.
They know which ones can withstand the extreme heat and cold of space, the
hard ultraviolet (UV) radiation, as well as the X-rays, gamma rays, and
cosmic rays that are constantly bombarding our technology outside the
protection of Earth's atmosphere and Van Allen belts.
The Tesla Roadster, on the other hand, was designed to drive on Earthside
roads, not galavant between the Earth and Mars. It was made to be light and
fast, and have good road handling. That may be fine on the twisting roads of
Italy, but the engineering that went into the Roadster is now a positive
detriment in space.
The biggest problem is that the Roadster, and Starman, and made up largely
of rubber, plastics, and carbon composites, which consist of long chain
organic molecules that include epoxy resins, polypropylene, polystyrene,
polyvinyl chloride, nylon, and many others. These make up the carbon
composite car body, the fabrics in the interior, the cushions in the seats,
electrical insulation, and a myriad of fasteners, fairings, and adhesive
compounds. Starman and his suit are made almost entirely out of organic
polymers and even the safety glass in the car's windscreen is a plastic
laminate.
All of these, at this very moment, are being subjected to dangerously high
temperature variations as the sunlit areas heat to 260º F (127º C) and the
shaded areas plunging to -280º F (-173º C). Fortunately, the second stage is
slowly rotating, so the car is being evenly baked like a rotisserie chicken,
but as the vehicle orbits toward and away from the Sun, it will produce
strong thermal stresses that will produce all manner of material fatigue.
Also, the rotation means that anything that comes loose can fly away.
But the worst is all that radiation hitting those long polymer chain
molecules. As the rays strike, they will break down the molecules bit by
bit, converting them into free radicals. The same goes for the pigments used
to give the Roadster its red color. Eventually, the car will become
bleached, then everything made of polymers will disintegrate and crumble
into dust.
It's all happened before and it doesn't take very long. If you look at
pictures of the old Apollo moon missions of the late 1960s and early 70s,
you'll be familiar with the images of spacesuited American astronauts
saluting the <https://newatlas.com/apollo-moon-flags-standing/23523/> flag
and the Lunar Module wrapped in gold Mylar foil to keep it cool under the
harsh lunar sun. If you were to go back to those landing sites, you'd find
the flag poles empty and the descent stage of the module largely unclad
because half a century of radiation has done its work.
So what will the Tesla Roadster look like in a couple of centuries? The most
obvious thing will be that the carbon composite body will be gone as the
epoxy resins have all broken down and the carbon fibers fallen apart. The
rubber tires on the wheels won't be there either.
Many other bits will have come loose as the adhesives turned brittle and
ceased to stick. Even the windscreen will have a yellowy opaque look,
provided the laminate hasn't failed completely or a meteoroid hasn't slammed
into it. In the cockpit, Starman is now reduced to a few metal joints. The
seats are bare metal frames with the fabric covers now powder, and the foam
rubber cushions long gone.
Other materials in the car will also suffer over time. Any lubricants will
have frozen or boiled away. Those that remain will degrade like the
plastics, turning into a brittle mess. If any graphite was used for
lubricant, the water molecules that make graphite powder slippery will
evaporate and the carbon molecules left behind will now have the property of
jeweler's polish.
It's very likely that the 6,831 lithium-ion cells that powered the Roadster
will have been removed before leaving Earth. The FAA probably wouldn't have
been too happy about 700 lb (317 kg) of fire-prone batteries sitting atop
the Falcon Heavy, turning into a very large bomb. However, there was a
battery aboard to run the cameras that beamed back video to Earth. That
battery may, depending on its design, start to generate gas and may one day
explode. Meanwhile, the electronics used to transmit video will very soon be
fried by the radiation as the delicate micro circuits are destroyed bit by
bit.
Even the metals in the car will be affected. The roadster uses advanced
alloys – some of which might start to outgas. Radiation will eventually
affect the crystalline structure of the alloys and may give them a patina,
such as is sometimes found on metallic objects in very dry deserts. Over
millions of years, some may become brittle. Some may develop something
similar to tin pest, where tin alters its structure at very low temperatures
and appears to rot.
In the end, if some distant future expedition does retrieve the Roadster, it
will be in a sorry state – a battered, bare metal frame with a few pockets
of organic chemical dust. But maybe that won't be so bad. Maybe it will give
it the right air of romance, like the Parthenon or Stonehenge. Or maybe it
will be regarded as a challenge by the finders, who may embark on the
greatest car restoration project in history.
Let's hope they get the paint job right.
Larry (too used for me) - Cleveland
-------------- next part --------------
If the SpaceX [1]Falcon Heavy is the world's most powerful rocket, then
the Tesla Roadster that it shot into interplanetary space holds the
record for the fastest car in history. This cosmic convertible will
orbit around the Sun once every 1.6 years, but how long will it
continue to do so, and what will be its fate? Will it still look as
pristine a billion years from now as it did in the videos beamed back
to Earth? Probably not.
At the moment, there are five US spacecraft speeding out of our Solar
System, never to return. Billions of years from now, when our Sun has
turned into a red giant and engulfed the Earth in nuclear fire, the
Pioneer, [2]Voyager, and [3]New Horizons probes will still be traveling
through our galaxy like a quintet of robotic Odysseus's.
Even back in our system and revolving about our Earth are satellites
that will still be around for many millions of years. For example, one
Earth-orbiting satellite, [4]LAGEOS-1, is a passive laser reflector
satellite that will not only remain circling our planet for 8.4 million
years, but will remain functional for most of that time.
With a track record like that, it looks as if the Tesla Roadster that
rocketed into space on February 6, 2018 will be cruising happily among
the stars as a permanent monument to the early days of commercial deep
space travel. It's a nice thought that the Starman mannequin driver and
his cherry red ride will still be around long after the pyramids have
crumbled to sand.
Except that's not going to happen. In fact, the Starman and the
Roadster are in for a very unpleasant time and may not be in very good
shape after a few years. And their lifespan, while huge by human
standards, may be rather limited.
At the moment, the Falcon Heavy second stage and the Roadster attached
to it are in an orbit that [5]Jonathan McDowell of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has recalculated from Elon
Musk's rather generous [6]rough estimate of a few hours after liftoff.
According to McDowell, the second stage is a Hohmann transfer orbit,
which is most economical orbit in terms of energy for going from one
place to another.
Where Musk estimated that the second stage was circling the Sun at a
distance between 91 million mi (150 million km) and 240 million mi (390
million km) with an inclination of 29-o to the ecliptic, McDowell
calculates that its orbit is between 92 million mi (148 million km) and
158 million mi (255 million km) with an inclination of 1.1-o and a
period of about 1.6 years. This puts its farthest distance from the sun
just beyond the orbit of Mars.
The popular idea is that the Roadster will orbit the Sun for hundreds
of millions, if not billions of years, but that isn't the case. The
second stage and Roadster are now essentially a [7]near-Earth
object (NEO), much like the asteroids that space agencies keep an eye
on just in case a large one is going to hit the Earth.
One thing that marks NEOs is that they don't have very long careers.
They're interplanetary jaywalkers with all the hazards that implies.
Planets and asteroids in circular orbits stay out of each other's way
and are relatively stable, but NEOs, and the Roadster, are in eccentric
orbits that cross the orbits of the planets. This makes their
trajectories very unstable.
The second stage will cross the orbits of Earth and Mars and its
trajectory will certainly be perturbed by Jupiter's gravitational
field, so there is a small chance that it might strike Earth or Mars
many thousands of years from now, though it's so small that it will
burn up in the atmosphere. Another possibility is that it might get
flung out past Jupiter or inward past Venus. It might even be propelled
into the Sun, as happens to many near-Earth asteroids after a few tens
of millions of years. The orbital mechanics are very complex, so it's
difficult to predict, but the upshot is that the Roadster won't be
roaming the Solar System for as long as its neighbors.
Another problem is that with the Roadster so close to the plane of the
ecliptic, it's in danger of being struck by cosmic debris. There is a
very small chance that it might be hit by a large object like an
asteroid, but the greater threat is from micrometeoroids, which over
the millennia will hit the car time and again. Each of these will cause
small and not-so-small amounts of damage, until it could one day look
like it's been shot at by a cannon filled with sand and gravel.
But the much greater problem is that the Roadster isn't a purpose-built
spacecraft. It's a production electric car, which means it's as
suitable for surviving the environment of space as a chocolate Easter
bunny in a convection oven.
[8]The Roadster passing the terminator
We're used to stories of interplanetary spacecraft functioning long
past the predicted end of their service life. Mars rovers expected to
operate for 90 days are still rolling after many years, and the Voyager
probes are still working 40 years after their launch. Even the defunct
machines, like the [9]Kepler Space Telescope, can be expected to be
around for many millions of years in a relatively intact condition. Why
not the roadster, then?
The answer is very simple. Space engineers have spent decades studying
how to build spacecraft and especially which materials to build them
out of. They know which ones can withstand the extreme heat and cold of
space, the hard ultraviolet (UV) radiation, as well as the X-rays,
gamma rays, and cosmic rays that are constantly bombarding our
technology outside the protection of Earth's atmosphere and Van Allen
belts.
The Tesla Roadster, on the other hand, was designed to drive on
Earthside roads, not galavant between the Earth and Mars. It was made
to be light and fast, and have good road handling. That may be fine on
the twisting roads of Italy, but the engineering that went into the
Roadster is now a positive detriment in space.
The biggest problem is that the Roadster, and Starman, and made up
largely of rubber, plastics, and carbon composites, which consist of
long chain organic molecules that include epoxy resins, polypropylene,
polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, nylon, and many others. These make up
the carbon composite car body, the fabrics in the interior, the
cushions in the seats, electrical insulation, and a myriad of
fasteners, fairings, and adhesive compounds. Starman and his suit are
made almost entirely out of organic polymers and even the safety glass
in the car's windscreen is a plastic laminate.
IFRAME:
[10]https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-15/html/container.h
tml
All of these, at this very moment, are being subjected to dangerously
high temperature variations as the sunlit areas heat to 260-o F (127-o
C) and the shaded areas plunging to -280-o F (-173-o C). Fortunately,
the second stage is slowly rotating, so the car is being evenly baked
like a rotisserie chicken, but as the vehicle orbits toward and away
from the Sun, it will produce strong thermal stresses that will produce
all manner of material fatigue. Also, the rotation means that anything
that comes loose can fly away.
But the worst is all that radiation hitting those long polymer chain
molecules. As the rays strike, they will break down the molecules bit
by bit, converting them into free radicals. The same goes for the
pigments used to give the Roadster its red color. Eventually, the car
will become bleached, then everything made of polymers will
disintegrate and crumble into dust.
It's all happened before and it doesn't take very long. If you look at
pictures of the old Apollo moon missions of the late 1960s and early
70s, you'll be familiar with the images of spacesuited American
astronauts saluting the [11]flag and the Lunar Module wrapped in gold
Mylar foil to keep it cool under the harsh lunar sun. If you were to go
back to those landing sites, you'd find the flag poles empty and the
descent stage of the module largely unclad because half a century of
radiation has done its work.
So what will the Tesla Roadster look like in a couple of centuries? The
most obvious thing will be that the carbon composite body will be gone
as the epoxy resins have all broken down and the carbon fibers fallen
apart. The rubber tires on the wheels won't be there either.
Many other bits will have come loose as the adhesives turned brittle
and ceased to stick. Even the windscreen will have a yellowy opaque
look, provided the laminate hasn't failed completely or a meteoroid
hasn't slammed into it. In the cockpit, Starman is now reduced to a few
metal joints. The seats are bare metal frames with the fabric covers
now powder, and the foam rubber cushions long gone.
Other materials in the car will also suffer over time. Any lubricants
will have frozen or boiled away. Those that remain will degrade like
the plastics, turning into a brittle mess. If any graphite was used for
lubricant, the water molecules that make graphite powder slippery will
evaporate and the carbon molecules left behind will now have the
property of jeweler's polish.
It's very likely that the 6,831 lithium-ion cells that powered the
Roadster will have been removed before leaving Earth. The FAA probably
wouldn't have been too happy about 700 lb (317 kg) of fire-prone
batteries sitting atop the Falcon Heavy, turning into a very large
bomb. However, there was a battery aboard to run the cameras that
beamed back video to Earth. That battery may, depending on its design,
start to generate gas and may one day explode. Meanwhile, the
electronics used to transmit video will very soon be fried by the
radiation as the delicate micro circuits are destroyed bit by bit.
Even the metals in the car will be affected. The roadster uses advanced
alloys - some of which might start to outgas. Radiation will eventually
affect the crystalline structure of the alloys and may give them a
patina, such as is sometimes found on metallic objects in very dry
deserts. Over millions of years, some may become brittle. Some may
develop something similar to tin pest, where tin alters its structure
at very low temperatures and appears to rot.
In the end, if some distant future expedition does retrieve the
Roadster, it will be in a sorry state - a battered, bare metal frame
with a few pockets of organic chemical dust. But maybe that won't be so
bad. Maybe it will give it the right air of romance, like the Parthenon
or Stonehenge. Or maybe it will be regarded as a challenge by the
finders, who may embark on the greatest car restoration project in
history.
Let's hope they get the paint job right.
Larry (too used for me) - Cleveland
References
Visible links
1. https://newatlas.com/falcon-heavy-launch/53258/
2. https://newatlas.com/voyager-40th-anniversary-retrospective-gallery/50744/
3. https://newatlas.com/new-horizons-pluto-flyby-nasa/34777/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAGEOS
5. https://mobile.twitter.com/planet4589/status/961394843648954368
6. https://newatlas.com/spacex-images-starman-asteroid/53301/
7. http://www.science20.com/robert_walker/will_elon_musks_cherry_red_tesla_roadster_orbit_for_a_billion_years_falcon_heavy_test_launch-230358
8. javascript:void(0)
9. https://newatlas.com/kepler-recovery-emergency-mode/42756/
10. https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-15/html/container.html
11. https://newatlas.com/apollo-moon-flags-standing/23523/
Hidden links:
13. javascript:void(0)
14. javascript:void(0)
15. javascript:void(0)
16. javascript:void(0)
-------------- next part --------------
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