SpaceX Crewed Dragon Circumlunar Mission

[Chris Bergin]

Just a note that everyone needs to be on topic, useful and civil.

Some people post an insult knowing they will have their post removed, but they may get to sneak that insult at the recipient before that happens. That person will be banned from posting if we see that being employed.

[docmordrid]

Flight of The Dragon
By Matthew Pavletich
..“There be a Dragon,” the young woman said, her voice quavering with emotion. “From this night on; there will always be Dragons…”

From one (amateur) writer to another.  Thank you sir.  Well written!

Yes, yes! Thank you!!

[MATTBLAK]

Flight of The Dragon
By Matthew Pavletich
..“There be a Dragon,” the young woman said, her voice quavering with emotion. “From this night on; there will always be Dragons…”

From one (amateur) writer to another.  Thank you sir.  Well written!

Yes, yes! Thank you!!

I have more...

[virnin]

Flight of The Dragon
By Matthew Pavletich
..“There be a Dragon,” the young woman said, her voice quavering with emotion. “From this night on; there will always be Dragons…”

From one (amateur) writer to another.  Thank you sir.  Well written!

Yes, yes! Thank you!!

I have more...

I would only change two words, but that's just because I'm desperately optimistic and "July 2019" is way more significant that "April 2020".

[MATTBLAK]

Well... I was allowing for the longest inevitable schedule slip, but still bringing it close to the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 13. It is quite likely that the Dragon crew will swing out even farther than Lovell's crew did, making the Dragon's 'Citizen Explorers' the farthest humans have ever traveled.

[Surfdaddy]

Well... I was allowing for the longest inevitable schedule slip, but still bringing it close to the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 13. It is quite likely that the Dragon crew will swing out even farther than Lovell's crew did, making the Dragon's 'Citizen Explorers' the farthest humans have ever traveled.

Well at least at this moment, I have still shaken hands with the humans who have traveled farthest from the earth. But I am willing to have that record broken! This will be very exciting, I hope it comes off successfully and without too much delay.

It has really been way too long since we've been out of LEO.

[MATTBLAK]

I've met Charles Duke, John Young and Buzz Aldrin - but Young and Buzz were barely more than a 'Hello' for me. I sat at a table with a couple colleagues while they interviewed Captain Young in May 1996. I recall that he was probably suffering from a cold at the time, as he reached for a handkerchief a couple times and his voice was rather hoarse.

[mikelepage]

Flight of The Dragon
By Matthew Pavletich
..“There be a Dragon,” the young woman said, her voice quavering with emotion. “From this night on; there will always be Dragons…”

From one (amateur) writer to another.  Thank you sir.  Well written!

Yes, yes! Thank you!!

I have more...

Dude, what are these annoying fluid discharges on my face? Great work mate.
Got any (e)books we should know about?

[MATTBLAK]

I've only had a trio of short stories appear in a couple SF anthologies, both of which are out of print. I have quite a few unpublished short stories and two rather unfinished novels - one of them an alternate history 1980s space story. I'll be working on the full version of "Flight Of The Dragon" over the next two or three days and can place it on this page as a downloadable PDF if people would like.

[mikelepage]

I've only had a trio of short stories appear in a couple SF anthologies, both of which are out of print. I have quite a few unpublished short stories and two rather unfinished novels - one of them an alternate history 1980s space story. I'll be working on the full version of "Flight Of The Dragon" over the next two or three days and can place it on this page as a downloadable PDF if people would like.

I'd be interested.  I went the self-published ebook route myself (science philosophy and sci fi/horror).  Will likely do the same for my first novel (of which I had written a third before deciding the architecture of my space habitat and the conflict that arose wasn't realistic, so I'm basically starting again ).

How this current trend back to moon-centric tourism/colonisation plays out will be interesting to see.  Supposing reuse of 3 Falcon 9 booster stages per flight plus reuse of Dragon 2, it's not hard to imagine that a whole cis-lunar fly-by flights such as proposed could be costed at less than the current cost of a falcon 9 launch.  How many rich couples would pay $40 million for a 7 day honeymoon? (edit: no pun intended, lol)  Some people spend more than that on weddings.

[Kansan52]

How many mementos (like a Falcon Heavy/Dragon model) could be flown? They could be used for science museum fund raising auctions.

[gospacex]

Indirectly, Moore's law helps everything.

Somehow, Moore's law helps SpaceX more than it helps NASA. This suggests something else is the reason for the difference,

The fact that a noob company can work on a state of the art SC engine and get it to work so quickly is very much a consequence of ML.

It's more of a consequence SpaceX taking a genius rocket engine designer, who was bored to death at TRW, where his "rocket engine design" duties consisted of tons of paperwork, and let him actually, you know, *build rocket engines*.

"""
During his time at TRW, Mueller felt that his ideas were being lost in a diverse corporation and as a hobby he began to build his own engines. He would attach them to airframes and launch them in the Mojave Desert along with other members of the Reaction Research Society.
In late 2001, Mueller began developing a liquid-fueled rocket engine in his garage and later moved his project to a friend's warehouse in 2002.
"""

If your rocket engine designer starts to build rocket engines as a hobby in his spare time, you as a company are doing something terribly wrong.

[IainMcClatchie]

If your rocket engine designer starts to build rocket engines as a hobby in his spare time, you as a company are doing something terribly wrong.

This.

[meekGee]

Indirectly, Moore's law helps everything.

Somehow, Moore's law helps SpaceX more than it helps NASA. This suggests something else is the reason for the difference,

The fact that a noob company can work on a state of the art SC engine and get it to work so quickly is very much a consequence of ML.

It's more of a consequence SpaceX taking a genius rocket engine designer, who was bored to death at TRW, where his "rocket engine design" duties consisted of tons of paperwork, and let him actually, you know, *build rocket engines*.

"""
During his time at TRW, Mueller felt that his ideas were being lost in a diverse corporation and as a hobby he began to build his own engines. He would attach them to airframes and launch them in the Mojave Desert along with other members of the Reaction Research Society.
In late 2001, Mueller began developing a liquid-fueled rocket engine in his garage and later moved his project to a friend's warehouse in 2002.
"""

If your rocket engine designer starts to build rocket engines as a hobby in his spare time, you as a company are doing something terribly wrong.

In other words, Moore's law is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for these new applications...

In the case of NASA and old space, it's not that they "missed opportunities"...  They actively dug in and refused to even acknowledge how reality is evolving around them. 

[Comga]

There is an article on The Verge about the SpaceX circumlunar mission with a video.

It includes a retropropulsive landing on a landing pad.
Is this something SpaceX said or showed, or is it other CGI video found on the web that The Verge thinks is the way SpaceX is planning to land?

Personally, I doubt that SpaceX will have enough precision to hit a landing pad at the end of a free return trajectory from the moon.  They have to prioritize the angle of entry. 

It is a repeat to say my guess would be a descent under parachutes to a dessert landing, softened by the SuperDracos. 

[matthewkantar]

It is from the CGI video for the reusable Falcon 9 from five years ago or so. SpaceX has not specified where or how the capsule will land.

Matthew

[Joffan]

... a descent under parachutes to a dessert landing, softened by the SuperDracos. 

Well that would be a sweet treat. Pudding down the Dragon afters such a mission. No trifling matter.

[Space Ghost 1962]

It is a repeat to say my guess would be a descent under parachutes to a dessert landing, softened by the SuperDracos.

I usually like to end things with a nice dessert.

[Robotbeat]

Indirectly, Moore's law helps everything.

The fact that a noob company can work on a state of the art SC engine and get it to work so quickly is very much a consequence of ML.

The fact that you can finance a huge project using the constellation is a result of ML since the demand originates with smart phones and self driving cars.

As folks said, the computational power needed for fly-back and landing is not found in older rockets.

And of course, ISP proper has got nothing to do with it.

SpaceX is most certainly NOT a noob company at this point. And they've been working on Raptor for years, building on their knowledge of building Merlins for a decade.

It's also not machine learning (which is a specific thing by the way, and it requires a large training set to work, thus not applicable here) that they used for Raptor but an interesting algorithm for studying fractals complex fluid flows efficiently.

[meekGee]

Indirectly, Moore's law helps everything.

The fact that a noob company can work on a state of the art SC engine and get it to work so quickly is very much a consequence of ML.

The fact that you can finance a huge project using the constellation is a result of ML since the demand originates with smart phones and self driving cars.

As folks said, the computational power needed for fly-back and landing is not found in older rockets.

And of course, ISP proper has got nothing to do with it.

SpaceX is most certainly NOT a noob company at this point. And they've been working on Raptor for years, building on their knowledge of building Merlins for a decade.

It's also not machine learning (which is a specific thing by the way, and it requires a large training set to work, thus not applicable here) that they used for Raptor but an interesting algorithm for studying fractals complex fluid flows efficiently.

First of all, in the general scene of things, they are very much a noob company - especially since as you they they started Raptor a good many years ago.

(Noob was a complement here)

Second, BO is also doing it

Engine development in old space companies took (and takes) much longer, even when it's just incremental development.