Let it not be said Elon Musk doesn't know how to grab people's attention.
The SpaceX founder captured much of the Southwest portion of the country's attention by accident on Friday night when his company launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc, California.
The rocket was carrying 10 low-orbit satellites from Iridium Communications. The launch went exactly as planned.
Well, except for all the fears of an alien invasion.
Here's my video of tonight's @SpaceX launch as it shot over SoCal, compressed to 20 seconds. Such a great sight to see. #SpaceX pic.twitter.com/VHbNeMDT8N — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 23, 2017
Hundreds of people in Southern California called authorities in fear of what the bright, white streak and expanding cloud in the sky could be. The Los Angeles Fire Department went as far as to warn, "mysterious light in the sky is reported to be as a result of Vandenburg Air Force Base launching rocket to put satellite into space."
The Associated Press
Musk joked about the UFO fears on Twitter, reveling in the chatter.
Nuclear alien UFO from North Korea pic.twitter.com/GUIHpKkkp5 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 23, 2017
Of course, he also took the opportunity to promote his next launch, because what kind of billionaire businessman would he be otherwise.
If you liked tonight’s launch, you will really like Falcon Heavy next month: 3 rocket cores & 3X thrust. 2 cores return to base doing synchronized aerobatics. 3rd lands on droneship. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 23, 2017
But more than stoking fears, the launch gave people a chance to fill up their Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Launch in setting sun created shining streak widely seen throughout southern California and as far away as Arizona
A reused SpaceX rocket carried 10 satellites into orbit from California on Friday, leaving behind a trail of mystery and wonder as it soared into space.
The Falcon 9 booster lifted off from coastal Vandenberg air force base, carrying the latest batch of satellites for Iridium Communications.
The launch in the setting sun created a shining, billowing streak that was widely seen throughout southern California and as far away as Phoenix, Arizona.
Spacewatch: SpaceX reuses rocket to launch north American satellite Read more
Calls came in to TV stations as far afield as San Diego, more than 200 miles south of the launch site, as people puzzled about what caused the strange sight.
Cars stopped on freeways in Los Angeles so drivers and passengers could take pictures and video.
The Los Angeles fire department issued an advisory that the “mysterious light in the sky” was from the rocket launch.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifts off in the air, as seen from Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Social Media/Reuters
Jimmy Golen, a sports writer for Associated Press in Boston who was in southern California for the holidays, said he and other tourists saw the long, glowing contrail while touring Warner Brothers studio in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank.
“People were wondering if it had something to do with movies, or TV or a ufo,” he said. “It was very cool.”
The same rocket carried Iridium satellites into orbit in June. That time, the first stage landed on a floating platform in the Pacific ocean. This time, the rocket was allowed to plunge into the sea.
It was the 18th and final launch of 2017 for SpaceX, which has contracted to replace Iridium’s system with 75 updated satellites. SpaceX has made four launches and expects to make several more to complete the job by mid-2018.
The satellites also carry payloads for global aircraft tracking and a ship-tracking service.
Weeks after announcing that he plans to send an original Tesla Roadster to space atop a Falcon Heavy rocket, Elon Musk has released photos of the car being prepped for launch at SpaceX headquarters. The series of photos, posted to Instagram, show the Roadster attached to a fitting and placed between the two halves of the payload fairing that caps the rocket. The photos were posted just hours after a picture leaked on Reddit that showed a grainy view of the car being readied for its final ride.
This will be the inaugural flight of the Falcon Heavy, a rocket that SpaceX has been planning for years. The successor to the Falcon 9 , it’s essentially (and simply put) three boosters strapped together, all of which will add enough thrust to make it the most powerful rocket in the world. It will give SpaceX the ability to send bigger payloads to space while also helping the company push farther out into the Solar System.
A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Dec 22, 2017 at 10:47am PST
But SpaceX doesn’t want to put a valuable payload on the very first flight, which even Musk has admitted could end (or begin) with an explosion. So the company plans to use a “dummy payload” instead. “Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring,” Musk wrote on Instagram today. “Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel.”
In April, Musk said he was trying to think of the “silliest thing we can imagine” to stick on top that first Falcon Heavy rocket. And on December 1st, we learned exactly what that meant. “Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity,” Musk wrote on Twitter. “Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.”
After some back and forth about whether he was joking, it became clear that Musk meant what he wrote. And there’s nothing really standing in his way — as long as the car doesn’t impact Mars, there aren’t really any laws blocking the effort.
