371–380 of 513 posts
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Being born wealthy doesn't require much expended effort from the recipient of the wealth.
Which is relevant how?
> I doubt it's any more difficult to
> get absurdly wealthy than to become
> an astronaut
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This is partly because they don't always take off with full tanks which allows for shorter runways and/or safer takeoff. Depending on the ordinance that a jet may have to carry, it starts making more sense to stay a bit lighter until a minimum airspeed is achieved. The idea of docking modular components in space is a good one though. Perhaps all you really need to do is lift a bunch of fuel tanks since there is plent…
The SR71 literally leaked fuel until it reached operating temperature. It had something crazy like 2 minutes to rendevous with a tanker after takeoff.
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> China has been working up to getting a space capability to send people to the Moon with the full backing of the government funding, by 2035[1]. They started in 2003. SpaceX was founded in 2002 and they are saying they will fly someone around the moon next year? I don't want to downplay SpaceX at all because I'm a huge fan, but isn't flying someone to the moon (and presumably back) more complicated than just flying…
It's not a greater achievement than the Apollo moon landings (it's basically the mission flown on Apollo 13, swinging around the moon without going into orbit and then coming back), but it's still something that hasn't been done since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
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Hurray for reproducability - we can still do what was last done in 1972 - this is something which eludes most scientists!
Look at F1 in 1972 and F1 in 2017 for an example of what relentless, continuous improvement looks like. Can you imagine what would be like if they'd given up on the series? If all that we had was NASCAR and Indy? The entire automotive industry would be over a decade behind, if not more. Most thigns people take for granted like ABS and traction control might not even exist. Look at SpaceX as an example of what happens…
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One was a ground incident that wouldn't have had people nearby even with a manned mission, and the other would have saved its passengers with the abort system. And if people are willing to pay the money and take the risk, why not?
> One was a ground incident that wouldn't have had people nearby even with a manned mission, and the other would have saved its passengers with the abort system. Not sure how that would mitigate the risk of explody Space-X rockets?
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> By comparison it takes ~8km/s to get from Earth LEO to Moon LEO No, from Earth LEO some 3.1 km/s will get you to TLO, and then some ~1 km/s will take you to Moon low orbit, so total about 4(+) km/s. 8 km/s is an approximate budget for a round-trip between low orbits.
Sorry, butchered that. I was trying to say the figures are less exact depending on how hard you want to hit the earths upper atmosphere. ~8.2km/s if you want to end up in earth LEO ~8km/s if you want to get back to the earth. You can also save a little if your sending an unmanned craft and don't care how long it takes or skip low moon orbit.
Sending a couple of humans around moon for tourism is a waste of resources.
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> True, but nobody has the money to develop something that needs multible moon test mission before it ever gets used productively. No one would be willing to fund anything that hasn't gone through at least one viability test on the closest short term analogous scale.
You can repeat that as often as you want, that does not make it true. SpaceX clearly did not think that for their mars architecture needed a moon testing step. Mars concepts such as Mars Direct did not include such a step. Unless you have extreme time pressure its much, much, much preferable to test on Earth and Mars, rather then the Moon. Earth because it's by far the cheapest, and it shares a reasonable amount with…
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Sorry, butchered that. I was trying to say the figures are less exact depending on how hard you want to hit the earths upper atmosphere. ~8.2km/s if you want to end up in earth LEO ~8km/s if you want to get back to the earth. You can also save a little if your sending an unmanned craft and don't care how long it takes or skip low moon orbit.
I wonder if spaceX is going to send a permanent colony of bots on moon to make a base there. The latency is a lot lower than Mars and would make a good start. Sending a couple of humans around moon for tourism is a waste of resources.
See: Apollo 8 mission.
It is very likely Steve Jurveston. 1. In a comment about the announcement alluded to it as a "recurring dream"[1] 2. 5 years ago, described a moon orbit as "when I plan to fly in space. I have two specific missions in mind"[2] 3. SpaceX Board Member and investor 4. Has the money 5. Knows Elon "Mr Musk declined to reveal their identities, only saying that they knew each other"[3] 6. Is "nobody from Hollywood" 7. Liked…
Source: http://spaceflightnow.com/2017/02/27/spacex-to-send-two-priv...
Absolutely incredible. This will be the furthest that humanity has journeyed away from Earth in a very long time. However it is worth noting that there hasn't been a single crewed Dragon flight yet. There are demonstator flights scheduled for this year though with the first NASA crewed mission slated for May 2018. That's an incredibly aggressive timeline but if anyone can achieve it, SpaceX can. The long duration fli…
> That's an incredibly aggressive timeline Sometimes i wonder if that's an strategy from the management team to put pressure in the engineers.