Elon Musk: SpaceX is sending 2 people around the moon in 2018

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Barzul

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http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/27/1...lon-musk-announces-private-citizen-passengers

SpaceX has plans to send two private citizens around the Moon, CEO Elon Musk announced today.

It will be a private mission with two paying customers, not astronauts, who approached the company. The passengers are "very serious" about the trip and have already paid a "significant deposit," according to Musk. The trip around the Moon would take approximately one week: it would skim the surface of the Moon, go further out into deep space, and loop back to Earth, approximately 300,000 to 400,000 miles.

The plan is to do the trip in the second quarter of 2018 on the Dragon 2 spacecraft with the Falcon Heavy rocket, which is due to do its maiden launch this summer. Of course, Musk is well-known for his unrealistic deadlines — in 2011, he promised to put people in space in just three years.
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The Dragon 2 is an automated vehicle; the system will operate autonomously for most of the flight. If there is an emergency, the passengers will need to probably step in, but "the success rate is quite high," says Musk. There will be changes to the Dragon 2's communication system, mostly to allow deep space communication.
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Was about to make a thread. This is insane/awesome. Going to the moon and back, even without landing on it would be an incredible experience. The fact that it is private citizens paying to do it is even more wild. Can't wait to see who the two people are? My money is on Lance Bass.
 
To be clear, this is a trip to orbit around the moon, not land on the surface.

Also, IIRC, SpaceX already has plans to to bring crew members to the ISS using Dragon in 2018. So I will remain skeptical this lunar trip will even happen.
 
o-ASTRONAUGHTS-570.jpg


It's time.
 
Doesn't seem that outlandish considering the schedule for NASA right now is manned flights through SpaceX next year.
 
I hope these two rich people are serious in other ways aside from opening their bank accounts. The stuff astronauts go through is no joke, I would assume these two have to do similar training.
 
Kickz said:
Damn, with all do respect I would be scared to go if its not Nasa
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You're going to see more foreign governments become more prominent in space exploration as NASA is slowing down. But SpaceX is a serious contender in this race and NASA knows that or else they wouldn't give him a $1.6b contract.
 
Kickz said:
Damn, with all do respect I would be scared to go if its not Nasa
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NASA don't exactly have a perfect track record though. I'd imagine they've blown up more rockets than SpaceX, but unlike SpaceX there is an actual history of fatalities. SpaceX will likely rack those up in time too when the manned flights begin. In reality leaving the atmosphere is super dangerous with very high risk. I think of you're going to step into a rocket, you're probably at peace with the idea that you may never come back or even leave to begin with.
 
This is also another slap across the face to NASA's SLS/Orion, whose (Already very ambitious, give their lack of progress so far) deadline to perform more or less this same task was 2022. There was a rumour going around a while back that there was an unofficial agreement between NASA and SpaceX that SpaceX could "have" LEO but Deep Space was NASAs. Well, I guess that's been torn up!

WedgeX said:
Passengers, not astronauts?

Weird.
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They're basically just going to be people sitting in a box. For all the difference it makes, they're basically just cargo. Whilst technically they'll be considered astronauts, realistically their role is more akin to passengers.
 
CyclopsRock said:
This is also another slap across the face to NASA's SLS/Orion, whose (Already very ambitious, give their lack of progress so far) deadline to perform more or less this same task was 2022. There was a rumour going around a while back that there was an unofficial agreement between NASA and SpaceX that SpaceX could "have" LEO but Deep Space was NASAs. Well, I guess that's been torn up!



They're basically just going to be people sitting in a box. For all the difference it makes, they're basically just cargo. Whilst technically they'll be considered astronauts, realistically their role is more akin to passengers.
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LMFAO it all makes sense now. No wonder NASA is being asked to look into putting a crew on SLS/Orion EM-1, due in September 2018...
 
Early Adopter for private citizen moon travel. No thanks.

Has SpaceX even launched someone to outer space? They need at least 5-10 successful trips on this moon route with actual astronauts before I would even consider this.
 
KINGofCRA5H said:
To be clear, this is a trip to orbit around the moon, not land on the surface.

Also, IIRC, SpaceX already has plans to to bring crew members to the ISS using Dragon in 2018. So I will remain skeptical this lunar trip will even happen.
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Yeah, this won't be the first crewed flight of Dragon 2, so they'll at least have a couple of flights under their belt.

Not an orbit btw. Dragon has no service module with an engine cable of breaking into and burning out of Lunar orbit. The flight will be a "free return" trajectory like Apollo 13. It's possible that these two people might break that record for the furthest humans from Earth.
 
Seems reasonable. Iirc sub-orbital sight-seeing flights have been around for a bit, so this is the logical next step. I don't think landing will happen for a while though.
 
Kyuur said:
Seems reasonable. Iirc sub-orbital sight-seeing flights have been around for a bit, so this is the logical next step.
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Nobody's been on a paying trip on one of those suborbital craft yet though. This is really several logical steps down the road :D
 
Kinda wonder how much the down payment for a lunar orbit could be? A million? 2 million? Or am I thinking way too low.
 
mnannola said:
Early Adopter for private citizen moon travel. No thanks.

Has SpaceX even launched someone to outer space? They need at least 5-10 successful trips on this moon route with actual astronauts before I would even consider this.
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NASA awarded SpaceX a contract to send supplies up to the ISS, which they do using Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules. They then awarded them a contract to send actual human astronauts up to the ISS, also on Falcon 9 rockets but with an "upgraded" and obviously fully pressurised version of Dragon, imaginatively called "Dragon 2". It's this that will be flying around the moon (albeit launched on top of a slightly different, much bigger rocket, Falcon Heavy). So whilst right now SpaceX haven't launched any humans into space, they've a) been commissioned by NASA to do so and b) as a result will have done so a few times by the time of this mission. NASAs safety standards are very high so if they can successfully get human rated for trips to the ISS, we can assume it's pretty safe - after all, it'll be NASAs guys flying around in it most of the time.
 
Crispy75 said:
Yeah, this won't be the first crewed flight of Dragon 2, so they'll at least have a couple of flights under their belt.

Not an orbit btw. Dragon has no service module with an engine cable of breaking into and burning out of Lunar orbit. The flight will be a "free return" trajectory like Apollo 13. It's possible that these two people might break that record for the furthest humans from Earth.
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They absolutely will - they'll be some 400,000 miles from Earth at the furthest point. Of course, in reality this is due to a *lower* dV than Saturn V and thus a reliance on the free return rather than due to any sort of capability advancement, but still!

Also, theoretically isn't the Dragon 2 intended to propulsively land on earth using the Super Dracos? And when I say propulsively land, I mean in the same way the Falcon 9 does, not in the same way the Souyez does? If so, presumably the engines themselves have the requisite thrust to inject and escape lunar orbit, but I doubt it could carry the fuel.
 
If I won the lottery and it would cost me everything I had won to take the trip I would spend it in a heartbeat. Travelling beyond the Earth would be a truly once in a lifetime experience.
 
i wanna go
edit: yeah and as posted, it's the free return trajectory, which means at least your dead bodies make it back to Earth.
 
Take a picture of the moon landing site and the flag.

Wonder what all the conspiracy theories will say after that. 💀
 
Too ambitious date. Not even GAO thinks they'll be able to fly astronauts to the ISS before 2019 and GAO is usually pretty optimistic.

Late 2019/early 2020s seems more likely. With New Glenn, Vulcan and this, the cislunar economy is going to become a reality way before people think. Who knows, maybe in the late 2020s we have 100 people working in space.
 
Two people for a week in Dragon 2? Ugh... Have fun. If i had to compare space to the ocean and spaceships for actual ships then even the most modern ones would be equivalent to life-vests or bodyfat at most.
 
Might be a stupid question, but wouldn't it make more sense if the first flight around the moon didn't involve passengers ?
 
Kifimbo said:
Might be a stupid question, but wouldn't it make more sense if the first flight around the moon didn't involve passengers ?
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technically if they want to make money selling flights to rich bastards, they have to make it easy as possible. And the trajectory they will use to get there, you don't want to fuck with changing course anyway.
 
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