【2019 Archives】

We've already established that Elon Musk takes all his jokes seriously019 Archives so when he said he'll send a Tesla Roadster to space, we believed him.

But Musk isn't sending the car up there without a driver -- because that would be pointless, wouldn't it? No, behind the wheel will be Starman, a dummy dressed in SpaceX's snazzy spacesuit, ready to boldly go where no crash-test dummy dared go before.

So what do we know about this endeavor? We know SpaceX will soon be launching its new rocket, the Falcon Heavy, on its maiden flight toward Mars. The rocket will be carrying a cherry red Tesla Roadster, because Mars is red. The car will be blasting David Bowie's "Space Oddity." The Tesla will fly through our part of space for about "a billion" years or so, so we hope that Starman the dummy likes David Bowie. We understand that Starman is not sentient, but a billion years of hearing the same song over and over again gets old even if you don't have a mind.

Starman in Red Roadster

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Feb 4, 2018 at 9:50pm PST

It's all wonderfully crazy but hey, it definitely is more fun than just sending a block of concrete to space to test out the Falcon Heavy.

Hopefully, one day SpaceX's spaceship will ferry actual humans to Mars, and hopefully, they'll be allowed to take a bigger music selection to their trip.

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SpaceX plans to launch the Falcon Heavy on a test mission at 1:30pm ET, Tuesday, Feb 6.

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