Cars in Space – an aside

People have asked me how I fly my cars in space. I gave a very rudimentary answer, realizing that the general population was not looking for a scientific explanation of the use of antimatter to launch and propel vehicles into and through space. Besides, in 2011 this technology is not yet feasible. I recently heard a “Stuff You Should Know” podcast that attempted to explain this, but they say a picture is worth a thousand words. My friend Bill managed to capture a video of his 1968 Dodge Polara being taken into space. If I get a copy of the video I’ll post it here, but here is a still from that footage.

Detectives later surmised that the ship that zeroed in on Bill’s car was from the vicinity of Ursa Minor, since the name Polara is a reference to the Polaris star. Chrysler chose the name in a marketing attempt to appeal to the excitement surrounding the Space Race during the early 1960s.
One reporter for the Cook County News Herald claimed that the aliens were confused by the Polara nameplate, but Mopar fans like myself understand that these cars are simply out of this world.

2 thoughts on “Cars in Space – an aside

  1. Timouth

    Here is my answer from 11 years ago:

    HOW CAN YOU FLY YOUR CAR IN SPACE?

    On older cars, you need to make sure your window seals are good. Other than that, just roll your windows all the way up and turn the air on.

  2. Timouth

    Since the beginning of the American space program, Chrysler Corporation had played an active role in constructing the powerful engines used to launch astronauts into orbit, or to the moon. NASA had chosen Chrysler to produce Saturn 1 and Saturn 1B launch vehicles, which the company assembled at the Michoud Operations Plant in Louisiana — former producer of
    diesel engines for the M-48 medium tank during the Korean Conflict.

    The NASA/Chrysler partnership would last well into the 1970s. In 1971, Chrysler prepared a Saturn 1B launch vehicle that would serve to lift NASA's 58-foot-long laboratory into orbit around Earth, and another that would carry three astronauts on a mission to rendezvous with Skylab in 1973. The 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission would be the Chrysler Space Division's final rocket launch. During this project, another Saturn 1B carried three American astronauts in an Apollo spacecraft, eventually meeting up with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in Earth orbit.

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