SpaceX Crewed Dragon Circumlunar Mission

[pb2000]

I think this is just the beginning. Not sure how many FH launches and/or new hardware may be needed, but if the 2018 flight makes history, what or who is to stop Elon Musk from shooting for a manned Moon landing as his next move?

That would require a lot more hardware and years of development time that would be better spent on ITS.

[Space Ghost 1962]

Hence this Lunar Tourism (Or 'Once Around the Moon' Tourism). What better way to put a knife in the back of SLS without leaving any obvious fingerprints? The trip will get the whole world's attention, not just the U.S.. The news reports are bound to say, loudly, clearly and repeatedly, the cost as a whole, and per tourist.

Congress both created and cursed SLS at the same time. They own it completely, no one, not Musk, anyone else.

Musk gave them a long overdue wakeup call. "Hello? do you know you'll soon be able to order passenger and cargo service to/from the moon? Have a pleasant flight ..."

clongton said here  years back that Musk would be already on the ground serving refreshments for NASA astros when they landed. He will likely be proven right.

Don't blame NASA or anyone else. Blame the idiots who thought "lean Constellation" was a good idea, or even more so walking away from Craig Stiedel's spiral development of EELV.

This nonsense of EM 1/2 and SLS "make work" goes away soon. Perhaps Congress gets a kick up ITS rump and actually does a HSF program worth a damn. It is still possible, and long overdue.

SLS, whatever its advantages, is not likely to look good in comparison. Falcon Heavy will have a famous trip PRIOR to SLS's first mission - a (probably) unmanned mission, at a probably-reported-as-a-high price, right AFTER SpaceX does the same thing for (probably but almost certainly reported as) a lot less money.

If, a big "if", Musk gets F9/FH reuse to work, Orion/SLS near term advantage becomes greater crew safety at longer duration missions, at BLEO destinations. And that's about it. It won't fly frequently enough to matter for the rest of what you'll need.

Political support for SLS may vanish quicker than ice cubes in a Texas summer..

It has been the same for quite a long time. Shelby and Boeing and Lockheed and Orbital ATK like it that way.

Feel free to tell them off at your leisure.

[Jim]

The flight will undoubtedly return a massive amount of data

Data from what? 

if the margins allow, a whole bunch of bleeding edge stuff can be jammed into the corners and trunk to do science without the usual aerospace design requirements.

Wrong. if they don't follow aerospace design requirements, then the hardware isn't going to do "science"

[MATTBLAK]

I know all the information is not in yet; but has anyone crunched any numbers on this? Prospective mass of the Dragon 2 for TLI? Will the Falcon Heavy be fully expendable, or core stage expended, or core stage landed on Drone ship & boosters at the Cape? Or all three boosters back at the Cape (unlikely)?

[Ronpur50]

Why this is an exciting announcement, I have lived through many such announcements in my life since Apollo 17.  I hope it happens and is a success. 

If anyone can pull it off, a company like SpaceX could. 

I can't wait to see if it happens.

[Lumina]

I think this is just the beginning. Not sure how many FH launches and/or new hardware may be needed, but if the 2018 flight makes history, what or who is to stop Elon Musk from shooting for a manned Moon landing as his next move?

That would require a lot more hardware and years of development time that would be better spent on ITS.

SpaceX has demonstrated the ability to do things in parallel; by 2020 it should have 4 launch pads at its disposal; and if lunar trips are strong money-earners they can pay for the extra hardware.

I think that the biggest factor in whether the space frontier opens up is a can-do attitude. We're not suffering from a lack of technology, only a lack of will. In the 1960's the only source of will was the U.S. government driven by cold war calculations. If the 2018 flight goes well, my bet is that Elon will be willing and able (technically, financially and "politically") to take the next step and go for the landing.

[Coastal Ron]

This might eat the orbital tourism business, mostly because it has a destination...

This trip won't have a destination.  A destination is where you stop and spend time away from your transportation to/from the destination.  This will just be a ride - one with a great view, but still, just a ride.

Suborbital will remain since it's a different price point, but it's funny to see that having started at about the same time, SpaceX is going to fly around the moon at about the same time that others are going to fly 100 km parabolas.

The market for $250,000 sub-orbital rides is already pretty limited, and passengers don't have to worry about going to the bathroom in zero-G while floating next to someone that may not be a soulmate.

The market for flying around the Moon will likely wane after the 1st flight, since the novelty of being cooped up on a small vehicle for 6 days with not much to do except peer out a window and float in zero-G won't be enough to entice too many people.  And once the first people do it, and the risks have been mitigated to some degree, then it does become tourism - which eliminates the true adventurers with money to burn.

[watermod]

Are there any "off the shelf" small communications sats that an F-9 could put in orbit around the moon to provide high bandwidth communications relays for the Dragon V2?

[AncientU]

The NASA response reads a bit like: we'll do everything we can to ensure that SpaceX checks all the contractual boxes before we'll let them launch our astronauts, but we can't hold them back from launching private individuals.

It's more than that. It indicates that this is the kind of stuff that private companies should be focusing on while NASA focuses on "beyond the Moon" destinations (i.e. Mars).

The goal posts just lurched to the right again. 

This is exactly what NASA was planning to use the next decade and tens of $Billions on -- and it's disingenuous to the n^th degree for them now to say "focus on beyond the Moon" destinations. Yesterday it was "focus on beyond low earth orbit."

[PhillyJimi]

SX may hit the mother load for Space Tourism here.  Mars colonization is still 25+ years off (at best). 

There are over 1,800 billionaires in the world.  They and their kids want to brag about what they did over summer vacation.   At some point how many cars, homes and tropical islands can you own? 

Given the options which are all very dangerous. 

Suborbital is most likely a very expensive amusement park type of ride.

Orbital is nice but it would most likely be a short trip?   10 Orbits?     

Apollo 8/13 would give you best of Suborbital, Orbital and seeing the moon up close while the Earth becomes a little blue marble.  It would be a week long vacation of a lifetime. 

To me there is no real choice in what mission I would want to experience if money was no object. 

[MATTBLAK]

This might eat the orbital tourism business, mostly because it has a destination...

This trip won't have a destination.  A destination is where you stop and spend time away from your transportation to/from the destination.  This will just be a ride - one with a great view, but still, just a ride.

Suborbital will remain since it's a different price point, but it's funny to see that having started at about the same time, SpaceX is going to fly around the moon at about the same time that others are going to fly 100 km parabolas.

The market for $250,000 sub-orbital rides is already pretty limited, and passengers don't have to worry about going to the bathroom in zero-G while floating next to someone that may not be a soulmate.

The market for flying around the Moon will likely wane after the 1st flight, since the novelty of being cooped up on a small vehicle for 6 days with not much to do except peer out a window and float in zero-G won't be enough to entice too many people.  And once the first people do it, and the risks have been mitigated to some degree, then it does become tourism - which eliminates the true adventurers with money to burn.

It would suit me just fine! I'd pee in a hose and poop in a bag and spend 6 days in that 'can' with a crew mate if I could get to look at the Moon close up for a couple hours and the Universe around me!!   I'd take my Wife, Maree if I could - we are both 'Space Geeks' and she'd probably cope with zero-g adaptation better than I could. But Dreams are free, I suppose - the only way we could afford this would be if we were some kind of 'Lunar ticket' lottery winners... Now there's an idea!!

[pb2000]

The flight will undoubtedly return a massive amount of data

Data from what? 

if the margins allow, a whole bunch of bleeding edge stuff can be jammed into the corners and trunk to do science without the usual aerospace design requirements.

Wrong. if they don't follow aerospace design requirements, then the hardware isn't going to do "science"

You see ISS crew using consumer grade electronics all the time, launching low cost cube sats and doing student experiments. I'm not talking about returning Hubble quality data, but I'm sure there's something that was axed (or not yet invented) from LRO that some scientist somewhere would love to have on board.

[sanman]

Totally open for discussion, but posting "wow" is not worth people's finger scrolling. So make a point.

Wow! So cool! 

Looks like SpaceX will beat Blue Origin to the Space Tourism market after all! This could kick off the start of a whole series of Space Tourist flights, out to the Moon or even just LEO (aka. cis-lunar space). Once the first flight proves itself - and garners all sorts of glory and publicity - then the floodgates could open up.

If it is indeed someone like James Cameron going on this mission, I would hope he'd take us all along by including one of his fancy camera systems on the flight. Then I can put on my Oculus Rift and feel like I'm along for the ride.

I'm just trying to understand what component of US govt involvement there may be in all of this. I'd read that the Trump Whitehouse had been seeking a lunar-related mission as proof to the American public that their country was more serious about space again. Both Donald Trump and Elon Musk have a lot of agility and showmanship in their respective styles, and so the rapid unveiling of this grand announcement would be consistent with how both men operate.

Since this Whitehouse is especially inclined towards positive-publicity events, then there may be opportunity for further govt-sponsored spaceflight missions that continue to push the envelope on manned spaceflight. If this helps to further subsidize development for Dragon and FalconHeavy, then all the better - and let's not forget ITS, New Glenn and New Armstrong.

Will the Age of Flags-and-Footprints soon be returning?

[MATTBLAK]

Totally open for discussion, but posting "wow" is not worth people's finger scrolling. So make a point.

Wow! So cool! 

Looks like SpaceX will beat Blue Origin to the Space Tourism market after all! This could kick off the start of a whole series of Space Tourist flights, out to the Moon or even just LEO (aka. cis-lunar space). Once the first flight proves itself - and garners all sorts of glory and publicity - then the floodgates could open up.

If it is indeed someone like James Cameron going on this mission, I would hope he'd take us all along by including one of his fancy camera systems on the flight. Then I can put on my Oculus Rift and feel like I'm along for the ride.

I'm just trying to understand what component of US govt involvement there may be in all of this. I'd read that the Trump Whitehouse had been seeking a lunar-related mission as proof to the American public that their country was more serious about space again. Both Donald Trump and Elon Musk have a lot of agility and showmanship in their respective styles, and so the rapid unveiling of this grand announcement would be consistent with how both men operate.

Since this Whitehouse is especially inclined towards positive-publicity events, then there may be opportunity for further govt-sponsored spaceflight missions that continue to push the envelope on manned spaceflight. If this helps to further subsidize development for Dragon and FalconHeavy, then all the better - and let's not forget ITS, New Glenn and New Armstrong.

Will the Age of Flags-and-Footprints soon be returning?

It seems nobody has seen my previous posts on this subject?! James Cameron has a five year commitment to his 'Avatar' sequel trilogy project, here in New Zealand. Unless you hear different from the man himself; that's his status.

[AncientU]

Well.

This quite possibly explains the request to see about putting crew on EM-1.  I doubt this came as a surprise to the President.  I would not want to be the briefer who has to give the EM-1 report.

I'd say this is typically audacious for Musk, but it's more.  There are a lot of things that have to move into place for this to happen, obviously.  But if it happens, it strikes me as the most significant event in space development since STS-1. It's a high stakes gamble that opens up cislunar space in one swoop.  One giant leap, indeed.

What does this mean for NASA HSF?   I obviously don't know.  What I do suspect is that the status quo for SLS is off the table now.  It will probably take a year or two to really shake out, and seriously nasty political battles, but I don't know how the current slow, expensive, vague plans will be able to deal with a successful Dragon flight to the moon.

I'm almost 50, and don't remember the moon landings.  I might not live long enough to see people back on the moon, but with a little luck, I may get to see *privately funded* missions around it.

Reposting...

The contrast between FH/Dragon 2 and SLS/Orion will be amply demonstrated over the next few years.

Let's watch the show...

[sanman]

It seems nobody has seen my previous posts on this subject?! James Cameron has a five year commitment to his 'Avatar' sequel trilogy project, here in New Zealand. Unless you hear different from the man himself; that's his status.

Okay, so Dennis Tito then? The Cirque-du-Soleil guy? Whoever it is, I hope they'll make the most of the opportunity to video-document the trip and broadcast it.

Blue Origin also needs to step up to the plate and get a flight team of their own ready. Bezos doesn't have any rocket called New Lindbergh, but maybe they can use that nomenclature for missions of note.

If demand really picks up for BEO flights, then maybe it will resurrect ideas like DragonLab, etc.

[Lars-J]

Elon Musk & SpaceX have, AFAIK, been careful not to insult, mock, or generally diss SLS. They don't want to annoy NASA, or those Senators & Congressmen pushing SLS. Also, doing so gains them nothing or very little while feeding the 'anti-SpaceX' types.

That said, it's hard to believe that Musk/SpaceX think SLS is any good. A big, expensive, rarely-flying rocket would seem, to a proponent of cheap, frequently flying rockets, to be a bad idea.

I don't think Musk & SpaceX care much about SLS, either pro or con. SLS is irrelevant to their plans. Their primary goal is not to kill SLS. (even if it may end up doing so)

What this does is provide some external funds to gain experience which will be VERY valuable for their ultimate goal moving forward. A flight proven FH and Dragon does open up a lot of possibilities in the cis-lunar area which can help pave the way for their next project, to A) show private spaceflight is possible and B) build a demand for ITS.

[ChrisC]

I skimmed this whole fabulous thread before asking ...

Has the press conference audio popped up anywhere?

[Nascent Ascent]

The passengers on this journey will endure risks far beyond what average tourists encounter.  Tourist means to me that you probably have at least of 6 nines chance of survival.

[david1971]

Please stop calling them tourists. They are not. I'd call them adventurers, explorers, something like that. Not tourists. They are not going to turn up and go, like a tourist would.

They are tourists.  They are on an automated vehicle, and just are going along for the ride.

Was Yuri Gagarin just a tourist, then? The Vostok 1 spacecraft was automated to a large degree, or controlled from the ground....

Well, there was that whole bail out of the capsule and land via parachute part...