SpaceX announces plan to fly two space tourists around moon

SpaceX announces plan to fly two space tourists around moon. It's all
over the Internet, evening news, morning news...

The space themed pages on Facebook have a lot of people whining over
calling the space tourists private astronauts. Like the long list of
NASA payload specialists were any different.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

On 2/28/2017 6:09 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
SpaceX announces plan to fly two space tourists around moon. It's all
over the Internet, evening news, morning news...

The space themed pages on Facebook have a lot of people whining over
calling the space tourists private astronauts. Like the long list of
NASA payload specialists were any different.

Jeff



For the last several years, SpaceX has been spectacularly disrupting the
space industry at the same time that it is rapidly advancing the state
of the art. So I wish them luck.

Still, as always with Musk, the announced timeline is laughable. For
example: The Falcon heavy has been flying "soon" now for several years.

In article , says...

On 2/28/2017 6:09 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
SpaceX announces plan to fly two space tourists around moon. It's all
over the Internet, evening news, morning news...

The space themed pages on Facebook have a lot of people whining over
calling the space tourists private astronauts. Like the long list of
NASA payload specialists were any different.

Jeff



For the last several years, SpaceX has been spectacularly disrupting the
space industry at the same time that it is rapidly advancing the state
of the art. So I wish them luck.

Still, as always with Musk, the announced timeline is laughable. For
example: The Falcon heavy has been flying "soon" now for several years.

As with everything out of SpaceX this assumes the Falcon Heavy test goes
well. Presumably they would then start using Falcon Heavy to launch
satellites, so there should be several successful Falcon Heavy flights
before this manned lunar mission is launched.

But, stuff happens, so we shall see.

Still, If I were a betting man, I'd bet this flight will happen before a
manned flight of SLS/Orion around the moon. That is, unless NASA asks
SpaceX to wait for SLS/Orion to go first. When your biggest customer
asks you to do something, you should at least consider it.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

On 3/1/2017 6:04 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
As with everything out of SpaceX this assumes the Falcon Heavy test goes
well. Presumably they would then start using Falcon Heavy to launch
satellites, so there should be several successful Falcon Heavy flights
before this manned lunar mission is launched.

But, stuff happens, so we shall see.

Still, If I were a betting man, I'd bet this flight will happen before a
manned flight of SLS/Orion around the moon. That is, unless NASA asks
SpaceX to wait for SLS/Orion to go first. When your biggest customer
asks you to do something, you should at least consider it.

Jeff


Well even if NASA were to ask this, that's no reason not to send paying
customers into LEO and back. And there are very sound reasons for SpaceX
to be doing this, paying tourists or no, as I pointed out in Rand
Simberg's blog a few days ago.

Having multiple successful crewed flights of Dragon 2 will avoid
requirements creep & other nasty moving of the 'manned-rating' goal
posts by NASA if SpaceX already has a sound record of doing such on
their own.

SpaceX cannot afford to lose their biggest customer, but at the same
time cannot afford to be held hostage by it either. Another reason I
think SpaceX should also orbit a commercial space hab at some point.
Either by itself or in partnership with others.

Dave

"David Spain" wrote in message news

On 3/1/2017 6:04 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
As with everything out of SpaceX this assumes the Falcon Heavy test goes
well. Presumably they would then start using Falcon Heavy to launch
satellites, so there should be several successful Falcon Heavy flights
before this manned lunar mission is launched.

But, stuff happens, so we shall see.

Still, If I were a betting man, I'd bet this flight will happen before a
manned flight of SLS/Orion around the moon. That is, unless NASA asks
SpaceX to wait for SLS/Orion to go first. When your biggest customer
asks you to do something, you should at least consider it.

Jeff


Well even if NASA were to ask this, that's no reason not to send paying
customers into LEO and back. And there are very sound reasons for SpaceX to
be doing this, paying tourists or no, as I pointed out in Rand Simberg's
blog a few days ago.

Having multiple successful crewed flights of Dragon 2 will avoid
requirements creep & other nasty moving of the 'manned-rating' goal posts
by NASA if SpaceX already has a sound record of doing such on their own.

SpaceX cannot afford to lose their biggest customer, but at the same time
cannot afford to be held hostage by it either. Another reason I think
SpaceX should also orbit a commercial space hab at some point. Either by
itself or in partnership with others.


I'm convinced we'll see a Bigelow 'space hotel' serviced by Dragon V2 before
too long.

Even if it's just a few short test flights. The pieces are in place for a
purely commercial venture with no NASA involvement.


Dave

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On Thu, 2 Mar 2017 12:16:11 -0500, "Greg \(Strider\) Moore"
wrote:

.... The pieces are in place for a
purely commercial venture with no NASA involvement.



Techonlogically, yes. The problem has been getting private finiancing
for manned ventures. The risks are so great that no one wants to
touch it. The government is the only entity with enough money that
can live with the risk.

So even if the ISS is succeeded by a private station serviced by
Dragon and/or Starliner, there would proably be government funding.
It might be through an arrangement similar to the commercial crew and
cargo prgrams, but that's probably where the money would come from.

http://rocketbelt.nl/pogos/nasa-lunar-transport

A rocket belt powered by hypergolic fuels has a 3.3 km/sec exhaust velocity in vacuum. To land on the moon from low lunar orbit requires 1.69 km/sec delta vee. To land on the moon and return to lunar orbit, requires 3.4 km/sec delta vee, with a small amount of spare capacity. This requires 64.31% of the take off weight of a rocket be propellant. With a structure fraction of 9.50% this leaves 26.19% of the take off mass as payload.

An A7L spacesuit has a mass of 91 kg when configured for 6.5 hours of lunar surface operations.

Near term biosuits using MEMS based hardware are likely to mass 35 kg and provide for 12.5 hours of surface operations.

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/617047main_..._spacesuit.pdf

With an 85 kg astronaut, this implies a total payload weight of 120 kg. Dividing this by 0.2619 obtains the weight of the rocket belt required to take an astronaut to the surface of the moon and back.

458.2 kg - take off weight on low lunar orbit.

183.1 kg - landing burn propellant (143 litres) - 10 spherical tanks 12 inches in diameter (half nitric acid, half hydrazine)
109.9 kg - take off burn propellant (85.9 litres) - 6 spherical tanks 12 inches in diameter (half nitric acid, half hydrazine)
45.2 kg - structure - including 8 kg in the form of 0.5 kg spherical tanks. Four columns of four tanks - two columns on each side of the astronaut.
120.0 kg - astronaut & biosuit

So, with 916.4 kg - in a rocket pack - the astronauts can go to the moon and return to lunar orbit - and even recover the rocket packs for reuse.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/remem...n-william-mook

https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamm...tivity/shares/

With more advanced systems - using more energetic fuels - and improved spacesuits - much more can be achieved. However, this will certainly make a splash!

On Sunday, March 26, 2017 at 4:44:42 PM UTC+13, William Mook wrote:
http://rocketbelt.nl/pogos/nasa-lunar-transport

A rocket belt powered by hypergolic fuels has a 3.3 km/sec exhaust velocity in vacuum. To land on the moon from low lunar orbit requires 1.69 km/sec delta vee. To land on the moon and return to lunar orbit, requires 3.4 km/sec delta vee, with a small amount of spare capacity. This requires 64.31% of the take off weight of a rocket be propellant. With a structure fraction of 9.50% this leaves 26.19% of the take off mass as payload.

An A7L spacesuit has a mass of 91 kg when configured for 6.5 hours of lunar surface operations.

Near term biosuits using MEMS based hardware are likely to mass 35 kg and provide for 12.5 hours of surface operations.

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/617047main_..._spacesuit.pdf

With an 85 kg astronaut, this implies a total payload weight of 120 kg. Dividing this by 0.2619 obtains the weight of the rocket belt required to take an astronaut to the surface of the moon and back.

458.2 kg - take off weight on low lunar orbit.

183.1 kg - landing burn propellant (143 litres) - 10 spherical tanks 12 inches in diameter (half nitric acid, half hydrazine)
109.9 kg - take off burn propellant (85.9 litres) - 6 spherical tanks 12 inches in diameter (half nitric acid, half hydrazine)
45.2 kg - structure - including 8 kg in the form of 0.5 kg spherical tanks. Four columns of four tanks - two columns on each side of the astronaut.
120.0 kg - astronaut & biosuit

So, with 916.4 kg - in a rocket pack - the astronauts can go to the moon and return to lunar orbit - and even recover the rocket packs for reuse.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/remem...n-william-mook

https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamm...tivity/shares/

With more advanced systems - using more energetic fuels - and improved spacesuits - much more can be achieved. However, this will certainly make a splash!

At 3.4 km/sec (10,840 fps) we have a range for a ballistic trajectory of 1,111 km (600 nautical miles), flown in 8 minutes.

So, a rocket belt, attached to a light weight space suit, equipped to land on Earth, would permit testing of a rocket belt prior to its use in a moon trip.