Christ, we love Elon Musk.
Recently tweeted by the man himself, our saviour, Elon Musk, are images of the Falcon Heavy Rocket. The rocket, which uses 27 Merlin engines to create enough thrust to lift a Boeing 737 into space, is sitting at Cape Canaveral and will be launched early next year from the same pad that the Apollo 11 Moon mission took off from.
Although the first lauch will be unmanned, the intent of the mission is to deliver something into Mars orbit; namely a Tesla Roadster car, a product from Musk's other company. As he said in a tweet earlier in the month...
Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2017
Respect. We hope that the car will be somehow publicly broadcasting Bowie's song forever, so we back on earth can tune in and hear it. Still, just imagine the bizarre sight of a brand new car happily floating about above Mars.
A successful launch next year will help Musk and SpaceX realise their larger Martian dreams, as the follow-up to the Falcon Heavy is set to be the "B.F.R." which will hopefully take humans to Mars to establish our first off-world colony. Exciting times.