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A $100 Million Trip to the Moon
Kyusaku Natsume writes "Russia's federal space agency will offer a $100m trip to the moon. From the UK Guardian's article:" "We've had the necessary technology for many years, the only problem will be finding someone prepared to pay that much." "
It may not be easy to find someone willing to pay 100M$ for a trip around the moon. Isn't it waay easier to find 10M people in the world willing to pay 10$ to perhaps win a trip around the moon ? I know I would.
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If you intended on paying the 100m, would you need to take one of those physical tests (the simpsons comes to mind...) that would make sure you were able to withstand the forces that come with space travel? I would think that it would be a prerequisite to go through tons of tests in order to actually go on a shuttle.
Either way, thats a shitload of money, but its also a once in a lifetime opportunity. (atleast if you are getting old already!) Some of us young folk will probably be able to take some "tours" for around 1 million or so within 20-30 years I assume (and hope). By then it will be safer as well, even if I had the money, I doubt I would do this, but give it 30 years or so and space travel will be a *bit* safer, and there may be actual tour shuttles available. so what are the limits? can a 70 year old man willing to pay 100mill do this? what about an obese 25 year old thats just waiting for a heart attack? do you have to be very physically fit? Inquiring minds want to know...
That's not... completely accurate.
The Soyuz capsule was designed to travel to the moon as the Zond variant. The system was tested in the late 1960s, using the same type of Proton boosted soyuz capsules to orbit the moon and return, and did so with animals aboard that survived.
But yes, other then being wrong in almost every other respect, you are correct when you say "They posted this idea before".
Actually, this is a neat idea on the whole. A time-limited lotto that was run by some formal lottery organization (not some random joe internet user like yourself... I'm sorry, but I have know idea who you are at the moment) where if not enough money was raised to cover the costs of the launch would then be donated to some "worthy" cause, or even a more conventional lotto drawing would occur + a trip to space (to orbit if $10 million were raised, or on Virgin Galactic if > $1 million were raised) if not enough money were raised through something like this.
Lotteries of this nature were proposed by many early Science Fiction authors, including Heinlein and Asimov. The trick is to figure out how to tell the scam artists from legitimate operations.
China, while having the ability to send astronauts to orbit (don't get me on the taikonaut issue), don't have the man-rated heavy lift experience that the Russians have. The ESA doesn't even have manned spaceflight experience at all, unless you count the joint ESA/NASA flights of the Space Shuttle... and even that was largly American infrastructure that put them into orbit.
So far, in order to pull something like this off, it is either the Russians or NASA. 10 years from now that may be a totally different story, but there is a huge leap to go from sub-orbital (like Scaled Composites) to orbit, and an even larger leap to go from LEO to lunar orbit.
The neat thing is that going from LEO to lunar orbit is not nearly as complex as going from sub-orbital to LEO. And lunar orbits to lunar landings are not too much more complex either.