FIVE YEARS ON: The Significance of a Tesla in Space

On February 6th, 2018, Elon Musk’s SpaceX corporation tested its Falcon Heavy rocket system with a most unusual payload – Musk’s personal bright-red Tesla Roadster, complete with a Starman mannequin behind the wheel. A cheeky egomaniacal act, an absurdist art piece, or the shrewdest product placement in automotive marketing history? Five years and 203.3 million miles from earth on its elliptical solar orbit, the debate continues.

Certainly, there is a lot of symbolism to unpack. Or is there? Alice Gorman, Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies at Flinders University in Australia, took a high-minded approach to interpreting Starman and his Tesla, writing in The Conversation:

In the 1960s, anthropologist Victor Turner argued that symbols can encompass two contradictory meanings at the same time. Thus, the sports car in orbit symbolises both life and death. Through the body of the car, Musk is immortalised in the vacuum of space. The car is also an armour against dying, a talisman that quells a profound fear of mortality. The spacesuit is also about death. It’s the essence of the uncanny: the human simulacrum, something familiar that causes uneasiness, or even a sense of horror. The Starman was never alive, but now he’s haunting space. In a similar vein, the red sports car symbolises masculinity – power, wealth and speed – but also how fragile masculinity is. Stereotypically, the red sports car is the accessory of choice in the male mid-life crisis, which men use to rebel against perceived domestication.

The imagery of a floating car driven by a space-suited pilot has roots in pop culture. The title sequence of the 1981 animated sci-fi fantasy film Heavy Metal portrays an orbiting space shuttle’s bay doors opening to release a 1960 Corvette roadster with an astronaut at the wheel, which re-enters through Earth’s atmosphere to land in a desert canyon. Perhaps Musk’s motivation was nothing more than the actualization of a cool cinematic moment from his pre-teen memories?

As someone behind the scenes during the launch, Alexander Provost of Tacoma, Washington, is among the thousands of SpaceX employees whose name is inscribed upon a placard on the celestial Tesla. A car enthusiast who owns a 2016 Nissan GT-R and a 2012 Porsche Cayenne S, he left the aerospace contractor in 2020 but recalls the project vividly. He suggests that putting a car in space was more an act of happenstance than overt symbolism.

“Usually, they’ll use a big heavy slab of concrete as a payload, but someone suggested to Elon Musk that he use a Tesla, and the idea stuck. They got on the phone to whatever regulatory body approves those things, then modified the car and mounted it to a structure called a PAF (Payload Attached Fitting), which it was my job to inspect. Everything on the car was removed; it was essentially just a shell. No engine. No tires. They were just mock-ups.” The PAF was equipped with two cameras pointing at the Tesla, suggesting that the images of the car set against space was as important as the object itself.

Provost doesn’t consider Musk much of a true car enthusiast. “I wouldn’t send my car to space, although clearly he could get another one. I don’t think he’s a car purist like myself and my friends. Things like the Tesla Cybertruck, in my opinion, are more of a way to troll the car community (than appeal to them).” (continued on next page)

Another former SpaceX employee and car fanatic is Ryan Alford of Van Horn, Texas, who worked on the 1st stage rocket for Falcon Heavy. While still in aerospace, he runs a metal fabricating side business called Ryan’s Sheetmetal Designs, lending his creativity to many custom car and truck projects, including a 1964 Cadillac Sedan DeVille he is customizing for an upcoming SEMA show.

“When I heard that we were going to send up a car, I thought, ‘Oh, okay, seems kind of odd, but I’m glad we’re not sending up a classic.’ Most everyone thought it was a funny thing to do. It was really unique. Elon’s mind is a totally different place, so if there was something more (symbolic) to it, we didn’t know it. I think it was a matter of saying, ‘Well, we have to send something up, why not this?’”

As a technician, Alford’s thoughts towards Starman’s Roadster skew practical, not philosophical. “A lot of us talked about how the radiation would destroy the car before it got real far. I’m interested to know how far it will go. The radiation breaks up the paints, plastics, leathers, composites – until there is nothing left but particles.”

It seems the profound symbolic message – if there ever was any – of Musk’s juxtaposition of a terrestrial consumer product against the heavens was lost on his workforce. But did the pure silliness of the act feed the outsider, rewrite-the-rules type of corporate culture that ultimately made the whole thing possible? Was it all just one big inside joke?

“I think the launch of the Roadster made it fun to be at both SpaceX and Tesla. That had to get them pretty excited that we were sending up one of their cars. SpaceX was a very fun place to work,” said Alford. “You worked a lot, but you enjoyed it. There was pride, a sense of ownership and purpose, and always getting ready for the next big thing, the next milestone.”