The Falcon Heavy Launch & The Adventures of Starman: Origin Story

The Adventures of Starman began on 1/11/18 with a fateful Instagram Post from Elon Musk

A Red Car for the Red Planet: Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring. Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel. The payload will be an original Tesla Roadster, playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit.

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on

February 4th, 2018: Starman in Red Roadster

With so much as 4 words Elon Musk announced on Instagram that Starman would be riding his Signature Series Red Tesla Roadster to Mars. Starman would be listening to David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” and “Space Oddity” on his billion year orbit around the red planet.

Ahead of the Falcon Heavy launch, no one knew if the launch would be a success. Elon in an interview with CNN confided that

It would be a great launch or the best fireworks show he has ever seen… Either way, “it’s gonna be exciting”