But even after that livestream ended, a few astronomers have kept an eye on Starman and its vehicle as they make their way out to an orbit around the sun that will bring it beyond Mars, allowing it to roam through space possibly for millions of years.
Each of the thrusters has nine engines of 470 kilos. That company's prospects are looking good: On Tuesday, It launched the largest rocket in operation, the Falcon Heavy. It is all the more so, considering the Soviet N-1 rocket.
As usual, at the first launch of any rocket, the cargo on board was of little value.
Publishing its quarterly results on Wednesday, the day after the rocket launch, shares in Tesla have not only maintained their value but have actually risen by 2%.
"I think the new architecture, the BFR architecture, is the way to go", he said.
Valley residents are perplexed as to what they saw overhead on Tuesday night, and it didn't take long for Twitter to catch fire with theories attempting to explain the spectacle.
During that time, a lot of progress been made in increasing the capability of smaller rockets - including SpaceX's own Falcon 9 - and reducing the size of satellites.
It's somewhat ironic that Mr. Musk's incredible achievement occurred now when our democratic system has failed to place a successful solution for "dreamers" on the launchpad.
"It's kind of silly and fun, but silly and fun things are important", Musk said at a news conference.
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The Falcon Heavy rocket test was a major success and a thrill for space fans. That's more than double the Falcon Heavy's thrust.
"We collectively assumed that the numbers on Musk's tweet were based on telemetry, and that they'd know best", says Andy Rivkin, a planetary astronomer at Johns Hopkins University who studies asteroids. Falcon Heavy is now the world's most powerful operational rocket by a factor of two, providing a heavy-lift capability not seen since the Apollo era in the late 1960s and early '70s, when mighty Saturn Vs rockets lifted astronauts to the moon.
Musk said the rocket - which is more than twice as powerful as any other rocket on the market - is ready to launch whatever SpaceX clients can dream up.
Since Tesla wants to build a system that's more generally useful, it made sense for the company to not push ahead with this past year and try to do it probably.
In a press conference held after the launch, Musk said he expected the auto to be "out there in space for maybe millions or billions of years". "It gives me confidence that BFR is really quite workable".