In today Sunday Times Newspaper in the UK. There is an interview with Elon Musk. In the interview he is asked about destinations beyond earth. To which he replies that " he may soon have an announcement to make concerning moonflights"
I wonder has the Falcon Heavy dragon combination the capability to land on the moon?
What sort of additional functionality would they need to land.
Could the Dragon be used as a lander and return astronauts to Earth ?
Whilst I agree that the Falcon series can be extremely useful for a manned lunar programme, it will always need multiple launches. Now I know that ISS has been constructed successfully with multiple launches, but I would feel safer if the number of launches for a lunar (or beyond) mission were to be minimised. That is why on a separate thread I voted in favour of a Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle.
It is interesting that the Chinese are now talking about the preliminary studies for a Heay Lift Changzheng vehicle in the Saturn-5 class of payload capability (again, the papers are on a separate thread in the Forum). Previous discussions had centred around multiple CZ-5 launches, although that might have been simply echoing back western speculations.
rklaen as far as i undersand you need 1870m/s of delta v to land and same to return to Lunar orbit.
I wonder if the Cargo dragon was fitted tanks and landing legs could this provide enough fuel to get the required delta v. Maybe the cargo module could be split with two sets of tanks in such a way as to allow the legs and empty tanks to be left on the surface
Well Falcon Heavy gets around 53Tonnes in LEO. That equates to about 19 Tonnes in LLO.
Now to land the full 19 tonnes on the moon would require about 7 tonnes of Fuel if Dragon 2+ had ISP of 350. To get back to LLO wstarting with full 11tonnes would require 4.6 Tonnes of fuel leaving us with 6.4 tonnes in orbit. LLO to LEO requires a delta v of 1300 m/s so we would require to burn another 2.2 tonnes leaving us 4400Kgs in LEO. Dragon mass 4200KG.
It may also be posible to leave some mass on Moon giving us an extra 500kgs - 1000kGS in LEOSo it may be possible to do a direct return to earth using a dragon and a variation of the Cargo hold to carry extra fuel. Now that would be an exciting mission
Just done the calculations If you have ISP of 350 (like merlin in vacuum). Then 53 tonnes in LEO will give you 16 Tonnes in LLO.
53 tonnes Full mass gives you 21 Tonnes dry mass in LLO if ISP 450. Delta V 4040 m/s from LEO to LLO. Thats raptor class engine.
Using ISP 350 you get around 16tonne dry mass in LLO.
Fair enough, no single launch Falcon Heavy to Moon surface then. Oh well might be done with a falcon 9 and a falcon Heavy then. Definetly two falcon Haevies.Total cost $200-300 mill. 4 people on Moon surface. I wonder what the market size for 3 days on the moon at $100 mill a pop is. Could be in the 100's
If FH proves to be a reliable vehicle (with 27 first stage engines that is not a given), theoretically nothing prevents SpaceX from sending a Dragon around the Moon (NOT enter orbit). The question is what impetus would Elon have for just swinging around? All other options require more than 1 launch.