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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."
Every time I read about stuff like this it just makes my day.
The meek will inherit the earth. The rest of us are going to the stars.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Yesterday Bruce wrote:
> But good luck getting Elon Musk to focus on the practical and eminently desirable target of the Moon. He isn't interested. It's only Mars for Elon.
https://science.slashdot.org/c...
Eighteen hours later, we have this announcement. ;)
Bruce, kindly please post your estimate of the likelihood that Sofia Vergara will show up in my bedroom. I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow if you do!
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.