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SpaceX Plans To Send Two People Around the Moon In 2018 (gizmodo.com)
Today, SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced that in 2018, the company will fly two private citizens around the Moon in its Dragon 2 spacecraft, carried by its Falcon Heavy rocket. "While the voyagers' names have not been disclosed, according to SpaceX, a 'significant deposit' has already been made," Gizmodo reports. From the report: According to Musk, the mission will last approximately one week. The passengers will travel beyond the moon and loop back to Earth, spanning roughly 300,000 to 400,000 miles. While the passengers will undergo some sort of training beforehand, it's unclear if the two have any experience with piloting, nevermind spaceflight. The mission, although unrelated to NASA's plan to slingshot astronauts around the Moon in several years' time using the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, was made possible in part by funding SpaceX has received to develop its human spaceflight technology through the commercial crew program. "This is a really thing that's happened," Elon Musk told reporters at a press conference. "We've been approached to do a crewed mission beyond the Moon ... [and these passengers] are very serious about it. We plan to do that probably Dragon 2 spacecraft with the Falcon Heavy rocket." He went on to say the company is "expected to do more than one mission of this nature."
Actually, this is Elon gaming the President. If he pulls this off he may get a significant portion of the NASA budget
Elon's not saying it, but that's got to be part of the calculus here. Outwardly SpaceX is very supportive of NASA and SLS, but this moonshot is estimated to cost around $200M, SLS is getting basically the same thing done and has a program cost of around $20B. There's no way anybody can rationally continue to support SLS when you realize that you could literally do the same thing 100 times with SpaceX for the money that has been spent to do this once the old way.
The COTS program isn't perfect, but it is making it more and more plain that we need to get congress and their porkbarrel BS out of space policy. NASA needs to be allowed to set their program directives based on technical merit, not political expedience.
Crew Service Module??
Are they gonna cook one up in 12-18 mos? I'd love to see it but I think its far fetched to say the least.
Dragon capsules already fly pressurized, and the Dragon trunk already exists, and is designed to fulfill the duties of a crew service module.
SpaceX was awarded $75 million as part of NASA's second phase Commercial Crew Development program in 2011, $460 million in 2013, $9.6 million in 2014, and $2.6 billion in 2015, for a total of $3.1 billion (not all of which they've collected yet, since Commercial Crew only pays once stuff works). They started development work on all things crew-related 6 years ago, not yesterday. This commercial flight is entirely predicated on the success of SpaceX's NASA-funded Commercial Crew effort, and that schedule says they'll be ready in 2018.
Initial Falcon development was paid for out of Elon Musk's pocket. He hasn't had to pay directly for much since. Also known as "a successful business with paying customers", something unfamiliar in most headline companies today.
Cue the complainers about tax money paying for joy rides for billionaires, who will be ignoring the fact that this tax money is being spent to develop an alternative to paying Russia for rides to the ISS. The tax money only paid to enable joy rides for billionaires as a side effect of paying to enable NASA astronauts to commute to work.
And for the complainers, the same program awarded Boeing $4.8 billion (also not all collected yet), and started a year earlier, so this isn't something exclusive to SpaceX.
It must be seriously detrimental to your health to be so obsessed with hatred of Trump.
I think he's a jackass, but I don't think about him constantly, trying to eek in offhanded bile every other word.
Seriously... Seek help. You're a fucking moron.
"Wealth is ethics and morals neutral. It's what you do with it that counts"