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SpaceX Delays Plans To Send Space Tourists To Circle Moon (cnet.com)
SpaceX will reportedly no longer be sending a pair of space tourists to circle the moon this year. The flight was scheduled for late 2018, but has been delayed, according to The Wall Street Journal. The reason for the delay is unclear. CNET reports: The flight was announced in February 2017, with SpaceX saying that two unidentified private citizens had put down a "significant deposit" for the trip and that other flight teams had expressed interest in taking a similar journey. The plan was for the tourists to fly on a Dragon Crew spacecraft launched from Earth by a Falcon Heavy rocket.
"SpaceX is still planning to fly private individuals on a trip around the moon and there is growing interest from many customers," company spokesman James Gleeson wrote in a statement. "Private spaceflight missions, including a trip around the moon, present an opportunity for humans to return to deep space and to travel faster and farther into the solar system than any before them, which is of course an important milestone as we work toward our ultimate goal to help make humanity multi-planetary."
"SpaceX is still planning to fly private individuals on a trip around the moon and there is growing interest from many customers," company spokesman James Gleeson wrote in a statement. "Private spaceflight missions, including a trip around the moon, present an opportunity for humans to return to deep space and to travel faster and farther into the solar system than any before them, which is of course an important milestone as we work toward our ultimate goal to help make humanity multi-planetary."
Latest estimated date for SpaceX's first NASA manned test flight is January 2019.
Makes sense that SpaceX won't fly private passengers on Dragon 2 in 2018 before NASA approves the vehicle for flight and sends up their own test astronauts.
How many tourists have already made it to low-earth orbit? And some were already talking about orbiting hotels. The technology is there - the economics is not.
Liability? Radiation? No manned test flights?
This isn't tourism, this is SPACE TRAVEL. The difference being casually disregarded to sell tickets does not change the physics or risks.
Can't have the masses finding out the Earth is flat.
How does it not make sense? People with large amounts of disposable money have been buying tickets to ISS for years, and before that Mir... and that largley through the so recently communist Russian's eager to take their money.
Given the delays in full on use of Falcon Heavy, is it really so surprising that they would delay manned use? Let alone tourist use?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I'll have to look, but this has been known for months.
3d printing a solid fuel rocket would make a lot of sense if you can keep the strength to weight ratio up. Laying down the solid fuel and the structure together could have some advantages. Even if only the ability to build in situ to avoid complexities of transportation.
It's the auto pilot.
This doesn't look like a tesla circlejerk story. Why is it on slashdot?
Human-qualifying the Falcon Heavy, which would be necessary for tourist flights around the moon, isn't a priority for SpaceX. They're pretty much through with Falcon-9 engineering. Now they will make the Dragon 2 work, but their main direction is to eventually replace Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 heavy with a much larger methane and liquid oxygen rocket which is as powerful as Falcon Heavy with just one "stick" rather than three.
There's a lot to be done between here and there, and every rocket engineering project has major risk, but this will potentially be a much more practical path to human space exploration than the SLS system which is an albatross around NASA's neck IMO and exists mainly as a pork-barrel jobs program.
In fairness to NASA and congress, we didn't know that SpaceX would be this successful when SLS was approved.
Bruce Perens.
umm... 'magnetic cannons' would likely convert humans to goo
Alternative propulsion systems are unfortunately a pipe dream. I wish it was otherwise. Rockets are pretty clean burning (especially the methane LOX one which will be the next SpaceX rocket). Let's not throw out the baby with the bath-water, we need to get the human race off of the planet. Regardless of how nice we are to it, it's only one planet and planets are not forever.
Bruce Perens.
You have to read pretty deep into the details of the Apollo missions before you come across full descriptions of the day-to-day life on those spacecraft. It was uncomfortable, unpleasant, and often disgusting. Since there has been no miracle breakthrough in propulsion the weight constraints in 2020 are essentially the same as in 1964, and if built a Space-X around-the-moon tourist vehicle will be more like living inside a discarded can of ham and beans for a week than flying on a luxury aircraft.
Even if NASA would let them launch a civilian on a rocket that is not yet man-certified, they would hold back and serve the long-term customer first. I doubt they have spare builds of the manned Dragon 2 variation sitting around for a side-project - unless perhaps the would be riders are actually willing to shell out billions instead of millions.
Space-x uses liquid fuel.
Solid fuel for humanned flights is a bad idea because there is no way to throttle or abort. Once they are lit, they run until the fuel is exhausted.
The only exception was the solid fueled boosters on the Space Shuttle, which was so super-duper safe that failure was unthinkable, so there would be no need to abort.
Not to mention that landing a solid-fuel rocket would be... problematical :-)
Bruce Perens.
Where are their competitors? Years behind, maybe decades. ULA has been so big on dragging their feet that nothing would get accomplished within the next several decades at best. It took Musk and SpaceX to give them competition. If it takes several more years, so be it, but "Musk will make it happen".
Reality set in and they discovered it is harder to plan a safe and technically feasible trip for a casual tourist than it is to send seasoned astronauts who gladly did so at a very high risk for country patriotism in nothing more than a tin can with flashing lights.
So the question is which commercial space company today wants to be the first to kill a tourist. Oh i am sure the stock price will go well that day. Having an optimistic guestimate of late 2018 was just for PR purposes, nothing more. It certainly helped the stock price.
You're acting like this is a problem???
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I read that NASA wants a new rocket to be flown 7 times without incident before it will qualify form manned-flight rating. Since SpaceX has yet to fly their new Block 5 rocket with the redesigned high-pressure helium tank, they have yet to start the 7-flight count. This, apparently, pushes the flight-qualification complete to after the end of 2018.
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
There is no Circle Moon!
God you're a boring meme whore. No wonder you're in love with Trump the traitor.
Not that I disagree that solid rocket motors are bad idea for manned flight, but whilst they can't be throttled thrust can be removed using blowout panels. Solid fuel ICMBs use Thrust Termination to kill thrust as desired.
Is there any way to force all the leading flat-earth movement leaders into this? Sure would be nice to shut them up.
J
There have been delays at the Model 3 crew capsule factory.
It's because no one has ever left Earth's orbit. The truth will set you free.
https://youtu.be/fznwTaWrOEc
...but you think a way to get NOWHERE will have a market? Beyond novelty?
Nearly every vacation I've ever taken has ended in the same place it started. Sometimes those trips are just to go take in a view. People go to the Grand Canyon & Carlsbad Caverns all the time and they're just big holes in the ground. Why is making a trip to see one of those so different than wanting to see the Earth from a distance?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
...but you think a way to get NOWHERE will have a market? Beyond novelty?
Nearly every vacation I've ever taken has ended in the same place it started. Sometimes those trips are just to go take in a view. People go to the Grand Canyon & Carlsbad Caverns all the time and they're just big holes in the ground. Why is making a trip to see one of those so different than wanting to see the Earth from a distance?
Not only that but a Mars trip which Musk is really wanting to do, would require a deep space module, and a trip around the moon would be a perfect test for that and probably have to be done anyway. Still need radiation shielding, artificial gravity, much better seals, better food and water conservation, etc before a two year Mars trip will be ready to go.
$$$ Always wins:
1) Delays in NASA human rating is going to cost SpaceX $$ in salary which otherwise would have been spent on this.
2) SpaceX is bringing in tons of contracts for launch services so they spend (and make!) $$ in this business model
Between Engineers working Falcon Heavy and Dragon 2 and the $$ coming in from the existing launch business, there are no resources or incentives to make this timeline beyond newspaper headlines. And, if they can just keep talking about it, the headlines will get generated on their own - (See: SpaceX fairing catch pics)
The only exception was the solid fueled boosters on the Space Shuttle, which was so super-duper safe that failure was unthinkable, so there would be no need to abort.
... and Ares I (cancelled), and SLS (~10 years in development and going on), and Atlas (for Starliner).
And lets not forget the Challenger, however I would presume your post was intentionally sarcastic.
Elon mentioned this last July 2017. How it became "news" now is a lot about the Koch brothers, the Murdochs, and a whole lot of other actors pumping out false memes to slow down Musk and through him the conversion to renewables and electric cars. This is war.
What's the problem killing a few billionaires as long as we get to Mars?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Trips to Mars don't take two years. SpaceX's Mars plans involve transit times of 3-4 months. You don't need artificial gravity for that, and it is well within what can be done with prepackaged food. A shorter trip also greatly reduces the amount of radiation shielding required.
You do need something a lot bigger than Dragon, which is why BFS has a payload capacity of 150 metric tons and would only start to carry humans to Mars after several unmanned spacecraft had already landed with supplies. It also will have toilets, something that Dragon lacks, which I suspect is something those tourists will be happy to delay their trip a few years in order to have.
Once they are lit, they run until the fuel is exhausted.
No way to abort sounds like a bonus if you've ever been on a flight where a passenger demands to be let off. Christ, I already spent hours driving to the airport, getting there early, going through security, boarding the plane, then finally waiting for it to take off. Then some dipshit decides they might be having a heartattack and I miss all my connecting flights and a 10 hour day of travel becomes almost 20 hours.
...going to happen this year and most likely won't next year either. Until they make several test flights with astronauts.
Trips to Mars don't take two years. SpaceX's Mars plans involve transit times of 3-4 months. You don't need artificial gravity for that, and it is well within what can be done with prepackaged food. A shorter trip also greatly reduces the amount of radiation shielding required.
You do need something a lot bigger than Dragon, which is why BFS has a payload capacity of 150 metric tons and would only start to carry humans to Mars after several unmanned spacecraft had already landed with supplies. It also will have toilets, something that Dragon lacks, which I suspect is something those tourists will be happy to delay their trip a few years in order to have.
I don't think I've seen any transfer orbit times around 3-4 months, although they depend on which attempt you make, but I think we just missed the short trip opportunity for the next 20 years.. They mostly go for about 9 months, so twice that plus another four to six months actually on Mars before they can attempt a return journey, and it's close enough to two years to call it so. Also have it include assembly time in orbit before launch if not a single module, which I doubt it will be. In deep space, radiation and gravity will be an issue for that time period. Of course, testing will be needed to make sure, thus the reason for around the moon trips.
...no. There's no modules, no assembly in orbit, only refueling. The transits would average 115 days, but could be made much shorter at a cost in payload. BFR does not use minimum-energy transits, it starts out with 6+ km/s of delta-v in LEO when carrying its maximum launch payload of 150 t, and is burdened with far less payload when it starts off with the same propellant load from the surface of Mars. There's huge amounts of information available about the BFR system, go look.
The plan is not to come back after half a year on Mars. SpaceX isn't talking about a flags-and-footprints mission, they are talking about staging around 600 t of supplies on the surface with 4 cargo craft before sending 2 craft with their own heavy loads of supplies and minimal crews to set up a propellant plant on Mars. For those who do wish to come back right away, 2 ~4 month transits separated by a short stay on Mars are not equivalent to 2 years in solar orbit in terms of either gravity or radiation exposure and do not require artificial gravity or radiation shielding/life support capabilities beyond what we already have.
We shall see. Musk always over promises and delivers late, but he does eventually deliver. We'll see what gives when the time comes.