SpaceX and cis-lunar Space Tourism

[meekGee]

Up till now, we really only talked about SpaceX in the context of ISS Taxi, comsats, and Mars.

With Dragon V2 coming up, and Bigelow at the unveiling event, and interpreting comments by Elon regarding the moon, it's a fair question:

Suppose a VC puts up the funds to do a space tourism company.   Trips to LEO, GTO, and lunar-free-return.   "In high volume, single-digit-Million".    Will people put down $10-$20M for a trip?

[pathfinder_01]

Given that Russia has sold an few tickets to the ISS at that price possibly yes, but being able to turn an profit at that price is still far away. The falcon heavy at the moment still goes for $77 million to $135 mill and odds are you won't be able to fit 7 people on that mission and some of the Dragon's systems are going to need to be upgraded.

[A_M_Swallow]

A version of the Dragon able to land and take off from the Moon would be useful.

It does not need protection against re-entry but will need protecting against back-draft from its own engines.  Very long legs will protect the spacecraft against not having a flame trench and the extreme cold of the ground during lunar nights.  A much larger fuel tank to perform the round trip without refuelling.

[king1999]

The current price is $500m with one person already signed up (need 2 for a mission using Soyuz).
I would think the FH/Dragon can do 3 person, each for $100m initially. When the re-usability is proved, it can certainly goes down to $10-20m range for 10 re-uses of FH and Dragon.

[sanman]

If Musk can bring down the cost of taking people to LEO by a wide margin, then it seems axiomatic that there could be some comparable lowering of the cost to take people to the Moon.

Musk and other multi-planetarists may not see the Moon as being terraformable or ocean-izable or icecap-meltable as Mars is, according to their far-flung ambitious timelines. But let's face it, for the near-to-medium term, the Moon is no less habitable than Mars. Right now, Mars is a vast airless megadesert, and so is the Moon. Yes, Mars has water, but the amount of water on the Moon isn't insignificant either.

So if you have to pick between 2 vast airless megadeserts, then go for the one that's mere days away, rather than for the one that requires months of travel time.

Musk wants spaceflights to become routine, numbering in thousands of flights per year by 2030. Well, that's more likely to happen by luring potential customers with the exotic-yet-nearby destination of the Moon, as compared to the very-exotic-and-very-far destination of Mars. Lower the difficulty barrier, and more trips become possible at lower cost. The famous "Forcing Function" then continues its work at faster pace.

The Moon is lower-hanging fruit than Mars is, even if Mars is the better-quality fruit in the long run.

Use the Moon to lure more customers into spending on trips there, and then re-invest that money into the better-quality equipment that will be required to reach faraway Mars and live that much farther away from the support of Mother Earth.

[spacetraveler]

^ Completely agree. Musk has said he wants moving to Mars to cost 500k. Well I think there are a heck of a lot more people that would pay more than that for a flight to the moon (even just a flyby) than there are who would pay 500k to permanently move to Mars.

[ArbitraryConstant]

I don't know about tourism, but I think the Bigelow approach of sovereign customers will inevitably happen if transportation gets cheap enough. Even if SpaceX has no particular interest in the moon, they'll launch anyone that can pay.

[Geron]

I wonder if dragon v2 with full tanks has enough delta v to land on and then take off from the moon.

If so then a dragon could be parked in lunar orbit, do lunar rendezvous with incoming dragon with tourists, and be the shuttle to and from the surface.

I bet bigelow is pretty excited about dragon v2!

[Owlon]

I wonder if dragon v2 with full tanks has enough delta v to land on and then take off from the moon.

If so then a dragon could be parked in lunar orbit, do lunar rendezvous with incoming dragon with tourists, and be the shuttle to and from the surface.

I bet bigelow is pretty excited about dragon v2!

Almost certainly not. That requires something around 4 km/s of delta-V, which means propellant would have to be something like 80% of Dragon's mass. In other words, assuming an empty Dragon weighs 5000 kg, it would have to weigh about 25000 kg loaded with propellant. Dragon most likely only carries 2-3 tons of propellant.

A dragon with an extensively modified trunk carrying fuel and acting as a descent/ascent stage could probably do it, but that's a major engineering project.

[meekGee]

In my mind, the minute you bring up a moon landing, costs explodes again, since nothing that SpaceX has done addresses EVAs, lunar environment, etc - nevermind just the added mass for the added dV.

But the added complexity for a lunar free return is (in comparison) low, and the added value (in comparison to Earth orbit) is high.

So I think there's a sweat spot there.

For SpaceX, the extra complexity of BEO HSF is "on the way to Mars", so they'll be getting paid to develop things they need anyway.  Which is Elon's favorite MO.

For the tourism company, there's a nice upramp, from LEO (with stock DV2), to GTO (better view) to Lunar free return.   

Just like with the son-of-teledesic, I am sure that more than one VC has done this math and had dinner with Elon about it.

[Coastal Ron]

Given that Russia has sold an few tickets to the ISS at that price possibly yes, but being able to turn an profit at that price is still far away. The falcon heavy at the moment still goes for $77 million to $135 mill and odds are you won't be able to fit 7 people on that mission and some of the Dragon's systems are going to need to be upgraded.

All the space tourists that have flown on the Soyuz have gone to a space station and spent time there (i.e. the ISS).  The goal of the tourists was not to fly on the Soyuz, but to stay on the ISS - the Soyuz was just a means to an end.

So sure someone could rent a Dragon V2 flight, but without a destination I doubt they will get many takers.

And just a note about the price.  Musk stated at the Dragon V2 unveiling that they have quoted a price to NASA less than $20M per seat.  When the crew version of the Dragon was first announced Musk stated that the cost would be as low as $20M per seat, but only if all 7 seats were purchased (i.e. $140M for the total flight).  And that's on a Falcon 9, not a Falcon Heavy.

Also Musk stated that you could fly 7 passengers and extra cargo, so no upgrades are needed.

Taking into account that the Dragon will only be certified for LEO operations to start, and that space tourists are paying to go to a destination in space, not just to orbit LEO in a capsule with six other people, unless the ISS is going to be hosting a lot of tourists I'm not sure how successful a space tourism company could be.

[QuantumG]

So sure someone could rent a Dragon V2 flight, but without a destination I doubt they will get many takers.

I asked Eric Anderson and Richard Garriott about that at SpaceVision 2007 and they said they already had customers for short flights. Most high net worth individuals don't have time to go the station for weeks. The problem is supply.

[Wigles]

Spacex would need to hire some pilots to fly those rich people around the moon.

Cis-lunar cruise spaceship pilot, best job in the world?

[TrevorMonty]

V2 should be able to support 3-4 crew for lunar fly by,  but sharing ( this includes bodily functions ) a small capsule with 3-4 strangers for a week!  If they added extra accommodation module eg old cargo dragon or modified Cygnus, that make trip more enjoyable, plus give extra life support. This extra module may allow a crew of 7.

[su27k]

I think they'll let Bigelow take the lead here, Bigelow has always been focused on the moon, and they have plans for tugs for pushing BA 330 around. SpaceX will probably just provide LEO transportation.

[Joel]

I wonder if dragon v2 with full tanks has enough delta v to land on and then take off from the moon.

If so then a dragon could be parked in lunar orbit, do lunar rendezvous with incoming dragon with tourists, and be the shuttle to and from the surface.

I bet bigelow is pretty excited about dragon v2!

Almost certainly not. That requires something around 4 km/s of delta-V, which means propellant would have to be something like 80% of Dragon's mass. In other words, assuming an empty Dragon weighs 5000 kg, it would have to weigh about 25000 kg loaded with propellant. Dragon most likely only carries 2-3 tons of propellant.

A dragon with an extensively modified trunk carrying fuel and acting as a descent/ascent stage could probably do it, but that's a major engineering project.

If you could have most of the descent burn be performed by a (later crashing) upper stage, you could cut that number in half. For 2 km/s delta-v and 235 s isp, you get a pmf of 58 %.

[douglas100]

Dragon is not designed to land people on the Moon. That needs a separate specially designed lander. There is no evidence that SpaceX plans to develop one. See meekGee's post.

And anyway, this thread is about tourist flights around the Moon. And SpaceX do have the potential hardware to do that with FH and Dragon.

[Burninate]

I would really like to see a Dragon 2.0 combined with a comfy Bigelow module that is in the mid-range (~70m^3), with a cupola mounted on the end, launched from a single Falcon Heavy, into a Lunar Free Return trajectory, with no transition to orbit, and 5 out of 7 seats marked 'tourist'...

But the math just doesn't seem to work out for my mass estimates of the above payload, about 20 tons, to launch on a Falcon Heavy capable of only 53T IMLEO, on what I would expect to be relatively low specific impulse hypergolic Draco thrusters.

BEAM is already in production and only 1.5T, but it's a fairly tiny module for 7 people to share, as is the Dragon.  I suppose it beats Soyuz at least...

What's the specific impulse of a Draco engine?

[Mongo62]

I would really like to see a Dragon 2.0 combined with a comfy Bigelow module that is in the mid-range (~70m^3), with a cupola mounted on the end, launched from a single Falcon Heavy, into a Lunar Free Return trajectory, with no transition to orbit, and 5 out of 7 seats marked 'tourist'...

But the math just doesn't seem to work out for my mass estimates of the above payload, about 20 tons, to launch on a Falcon Heavy capable of only 53T IMLEO, on what I would expect to be relatively low specific impulse hypergolic Draco thrusters.

A Bigelow BA330 would mass about 20 mt, and a dry Dragon v2 about 5 mt (I'm guessing it's a bit more than a dry Dragon v1). If a single FH can launch about 16 mt into TLI, then two launches using LEO rendezvous could presumably send about 32 mt, leaving around 7 mt for consumables including propellant, and passengers. This would be more than enough for a full 7-passenger free return trajectory, with plenty of elbow room on the (disposable?) BA330.

Would there be sufficient available propellant to brake the Dragon+BA330 into lunar orbit, and later send the Dragon by itself back to Earth? The delta V required is not a huge amount, but they would not have a huge amount of propellant to work with either.

If the numbers don't work out (and I suspect that they don't), then what about sending an unmanned BA330 plus propulsion module into lunar orbit using two FH launches and LEO rendezvous, and later using single FH launches to send Dragons with crew and consumables to rendezvous with the lunar BA330 and some time later return to Earth?

[Burninate]

I would really like to see a Dragon 2.0 combined with a comfy Bigelow module that is in the mid-range (~70m^3), with a cupola mounted on the end, launched from a single Falcon Heavy, into a Lunar Free Return trajectory, with no transition to orbit, and 5 out of 7 seats marked 'tourist'...

But the math just doesn't seem to work out for my mass estimates of the above payload, about 20 tons, to launch on a Falcon Heavy capable of only 53T IMLEO, on what I would expect to be relatively low specific impulse hypergolic Draco thrusters.

A Bigelow BA330 would mass about 20 mt, and a dry Dragon v2 about 4 mt (I'm guessing it's about the same as a Dragon v1). If a single FH can launch about 16 mt into TLI, then two launches using LEO rendezvous could presumably send about 32 mt, leaving around 8 mt for consumables including propellant, and passengers. This would be more than enough for a full 7-passenger free return trajectory, with plenty of elbow room on the (disposable?) BA330.

Would there be sufficient available propellant to brake the Dragon+BA330 into lunar orbit, and later send the Dragon by itself back to Earth? The delta V required is not a huge amount, but they would not have a huge amount of propellant to work with either.

If the numbers don't work out (and I suspect that they don't), then what about sending an unmanned BA330 plus propulsion module into lunar orbit using two FH launches and LEO rendezvous, and later using single FH launches to send Dragons with crew and consumables to rendezvous with the lunar BA330 and some time later return to Earth?

A Lunar free return trajectory alone costs you around 3250 - 3350 m/s.  This is a lot.  Assume a need for some amount in reserve for maneuvering, 3500ms/ total.  These are the dry:wet (payload) mass fractions for that 3500m/s implied by various specific impulses, and the max payload that suggests for a 53 ton (with optimistic crossfeed functionaity) Falcon Heavy launch:
330s 33.9% 18.0T
300s 30.4% 16.1T
270s 26.7% 14.2T
240s 22.6% 12.0T

LEO -> LLO -> LEO is about a 6.8km/s mission (numbers not optimized for free return, which likely costs slightly more).
Similar numbers for 7km/s dV:
330s 11.5% 6.10T
300s 9.26% 4.91T
270s 7.11% 3.77T
240s 5.11% 2.71T

Iterate this *again* if you want to add on the (slightly more than) 3500/s dV, and the landing gear, and the heavy high-thrust engines, required to actually land on the Lunar surface.  A lunar return really is not that much 'closer' dV-wise than a Mars return.