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I wonder what NASA is thinking about this? The NASA Commercial Crew program which helped fund the development of the Dragon was funded for manned flight to the ISS. I'm curious if they see this as part of the project scope?
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Everyone's always so cynical... They're sending (presumably) two non-astronauts further than any humans have ever been. I assume there will be future milestones that probably include landing on the moon to test the Mars landing.
Have they said they'll test Martian equipment with Lunar landings? I'd guess it'd make a pretty poor testing ground, considering the cost of getting there.
> We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission. Can't wait to hear who booked this trip! Definitely one of the coolest ways to spend a lot of superfluous money :)
While this feat depends on hitting a lot of intermediate milestones - Falcon Heavy Test, Crew Dragon Unmanned to ISS, Crew Dragon manned to ISS, etc, there is no "show-stopper" that is apparent right now. I like how they have avoided committing to the much harder "landing on the Moon and then return" scenario.
Well, they haven't got a lander for one thing. The Apollo LM had its design finalised in '63, and only flew in '65. SpaceX would surely do it quicker now, with the benefit of experience, but from scratch to operations in a year for such a unique vehicle is quite unrealistic.
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Everyone's always so cynical... They're sending (presumably) two non-astronauts further than any humans have ever been. I assume there will be future milestones that probably include landing on the moon to test the Mars landing.
Landing on the moon to "test" the Mars landing makes almost no sense. The a moon is just to different, landing on mars can be trained much better on Earth or on Mars itself. The simuliertes are not enough to make it sensible if you don't have another reason to land on the moon too.
So, hmm, we wants to send people around the moon, a year and a half from now, with a rocket he never tested and with a capsule that never flew? I expect half of the directors of SpaceX to resign in the next two days...
They are going to test the rocket later this year, and the rocket is based on the F9 design, so nothing done from scratch. The crew capsule is also just an enhancement of the capsule which travelled to the ISS and back again several times. It also is going to be tested with flights to the ISS before this planned moon mission. Once you exchange the F9 for the F9 Heavy, going to the moon is not really anyhow more diffi…
> We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission. Can't wait to hear who booked this trip! Definitely one of the coolest ways to spend a lot of superfluous money :)
I imagine that would be a pretty easy record to break, if you're doing a translunar flight anyway then getting a bit higher doesn't take much more energy (source: played a lot of Kerbal).
On the other hand the passengers might prefer a close-up view of the Moon to a record.
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Not sure how this differs from Apollo.
The cold war? A national effort? Dead crews during the project? I mean, I'm half joking, I believe that it is a possible objective, as much as it is possible to manufacture 500k Model 3s a year.. next year. Possible, but a monumental effort and something on which Musk strongly disagrees even with the top managers in his own companies.
This does not seem so impossible. A couple of delays will happen, but all in all, there is no fundamental problem.