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Except today it will be done at less than 1/10th the cost. So yeah, progress.
If it will be done. Musk isn't great at the "deliver" part, not to mention how dangerous this mission is.
We sure have different definitions of "delivering".
Is anyone else imagining the mission is going to discretely drop such a module when it's in the moon's shadow or do I just have an overactive imagination?
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I don't think anyone is missing that, cutesy little jokes like that just don't tend to do well here on HN.
I think possibly lots of people are missing it. How well known is Kennedy's speech for those who weren't alive at the time? And yes it was a joke, but contained within the joke is a pointed commentary.
I really root for 'em even though I know that China has started working on a similar business-model-trip back in '03 and they still haven't made any public announcement or published a precise launch year...
Note that NASA, I believe at Trump's urging, recently said they would try to place humans on the first flight of the Space Launch System (the new heavy lift rocket) - i.e., no unmanned testing first. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/science/nasa-looks-to-spe... Is Musk still maintaining a relationship with Trump? When Uber founder Travis Kalanick left Trump's business council, Musk was still on it AFAIK. I wonder i…
I'm pretty sure Musk is doing what's reliably necessary to keep his companies running under Trump. An administration full of oil wealth and climate change deniers are a significant business risk when you make electric cars and have States banking photovoltaics. He needs to be within Trump's monkeysphere.
I loved that. Thanks for a good chuckle.
Downvotes be damned.
> 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 :)
> Can't wait to hear who booked this trip! Definitely one of the coolest ways to spend a lot of superfluous money :) Imagine it ends up being some celebrity, like Leonardo di Caprio (who has shown interest in space IIRC) or Lady Gaga. Don't you think it would somehow tarnish the whole thing?
Also, hopefully not Matt Damon.
So it seems the big challenge with landing and taking off from the moon is carrying that much fuel. A robotic module on the moon that converts water, carbon and sunlight to rocket fuel should solve that problem. Is anyone else imagining the mission is going to discretely drop such a module when it's in the moon's shadow or do I just have an overactive imagination?
I find this schedule very very unlikely. No humans have flown in the Dragon at all yet. Also none on any of SpaceX:s rockets. There have been lots of launch and pad failures. I'm cheering for SpaceX for doing more towards spacefaring, but I'm very skeptical and think this will, at least, end up being negative PR to them, and, at worst, a lot more.
They had failures, but they're going forward. They launched again recently, and nailed the landing , again. That said, I suppose we need to apply Elon Time coefficient here, and the Moon mission will end up being in 2019 / 2020. Still, I'm very excited, because for the first time in my life, the possibility of humans going to the Moon again within my lifetime feels actually real .
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Yes but as the ULA whitepaper pointed out there are some challenges to doing so in orbit. For one, the lack of gravity makes it hard to pump fuel. You can spin the tanker to achieve fuel settling but now you are both spinning bodies. Then there is handling cryogenic propellants in space, you get nominal bleed off from warming and again ULA had a really interesting design of an internal combustion engine using the ble…
Do the fuels have to remain in a cryogenic state in space? Can much larger containers with warmer fuel be used once the fuel is in orbit? I have no idea if this makes any sense.