starman
Latest
SpaceX Starman Roadster completes its first orbit around the Sun
Starman and his Tesla Roadster are now regular denizens of space. According to data from Where is Roadster, the cosmic driver has completed his first orbit around the Sun, taking 557 days since the first Falcon Heavy launch to circle our home star. Its path has taken it over 762 million miles since then, or enough to exceed its original 36,000-mile warranty over 21,000 times.
SpaceX's Starman Roadster has ventured past Mars
Starman and its Tesla Roadster are officially a long, long way from home. SpaceX has confirmed that Falcon Heavy's test payload has passed Mars' orbit, putting it at one of its greatest distances away from the Sun (it should reach its far point on November 8th at 1.66AU, or 155 million miles). While it isn't about to rendezvous with Mars, this is no mean feat for an EV-toting mannequin. And you might want to remember this moment -- it's going to be a long time before Starman is close to Earth.
SpaceX and 'Westworld' creators made a Falcon Heavy short film
Elon Musk promised a short film about the inaugural Falcon Heavy launch from the team behind Westworld, and he delivered. The entrepreneur has posted the video, Falcon Heavy and Starman, in two parts on Instagram (update: now on YouTube). It's not exactly a magnum opus, but it does a good job of encapsulating SpaceX's milestone in a short amount of time, including Starman's departure. Surprisingly, the video includes the loss of the center booster -- SpaceX isn't pretending the launch was all sunshine and roses. And naturally, there's no shortage of David Bowie for the soundtrack.
Watch Starman and its Tesla get swallowed by the darkness of space
Starman is drifting farther and farther away from us; a lot of the telescopes that have been tracking the Tesla and its passenger's journey will soon no longer be able to see them. The Virtual Telescope Project, which has been keeping an eye on the spacefarer and its trusty Tesla from the time they left the planet aboard the first Falcon Heavy launch, is bidding the duo goodbye by live streaming their trajectory one last time. VTP gives people a way to access several robotic telescopes in real time over the internet -- the images of Starman and its Tesla zooming across the sky, in particular, were and will be provided by the Tenagra Observatories in Arizona.
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launch gets a spacesuit-clad 'Starman'
The debut launch of the Falcon Heavy will be a serious and complex affair, but SpaceX boss Elon Musk is trying to boost the fun level to maximum. Not only is he using a cherry red Tesla Roadster as ballast for the first test, he's placed a dummy wearing SpaceX's stylish new space suit in the driver's seat, according to a new Instagram post. "Starman in Red Roadster," Musk wrote, a reference to the fact that the EV will supposedly be blasting David Bowie's Space Oddity.
WoW Insider Show Episode 59: Rogues gallery
We've got a lot of WoW Insider Show to cover -- last week, we were so embroiled in the BlizzCon run-up that I didn't have a chance to post about episode 58, and episode 59 was actually taped right in the front entrance of the Anaheim Convention Center on Friday evening. Episode 58 featured our newest columnist, Chase Christian, and we talked about Rogues (obviously -- that's what he writes about), Blizzard's big win against MMO Glider, and the reasons why you still have your honor points and tokens. And in episode 59, we talked BlizzCon, because we were right there -- Gnomewise and Duncor joined me inside the convention center, and we had short cameos from both WoW Radio folks (Maxspeed was around to talk to us), Starman from World of Warcast, and we were able to talk to some fans, too. It was really fun, too -- we should do that more often.So you've got two shows to listen to if you haven't been keeping up -- episode 58 and episode 59 are both over on WoW Radio right now for your listening pleasure. That's a lot of WoW Insider Show, but hey, you can listen in while you're running around doing all of these new achievements in the game. And don't forget, if you want to nab the show even without seeing it posted here, you can always subscribe in iTunes, and you'll automatically downlload it as soon as it's out.And don't forget -- we do this live every Saturday at 3:30pm Eastern -- this week, we'll be back in the virtual studio, Turpster should be back on with us (although lots of people asked me at BlizzCon, no, unfortunately, he didn't find a ship captain willing to give him a ride to BlizzCon), and it should be a lot of fun as always.Listen to Episode 58 here on the page:
