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Moon Businesses Space

SpaceX Delays Plans To Send Space Tourists To Circle Moon (cnet.com) 124

Posted by BeauHD from the delayed-until-further-notice dept.
SpaceX will reportedly no longer be sending a pair of space tourists to circle the moon this year. The flight was scheduled for late 2018, but has been delayed, according to The Wall Street Journal. The reason for the delay is unclear. CNET reports: The flight was announced in February 2017, with SpaceX saying that two unidentified private citizens had put down a "significant deposit" for the trip and that other flight teams had expressed interest in taking a similar journey. The plan was for the tourists to fly on a Dragon Crew spacecraft launched from Earth by a Falcon Heavy rocket.

"SpaceX is still planning to fly private individuals on a trip around the moon and there is growing interest from many customers," company spokesman James Gleeson wrote in a statement. "Private spaceflight missions, including a trip around the moon, present an opportunity for humans to return to deep space and to travel faster and farther into the solar system than any before them, which is of course an important milestone as we work toward our ultimate goal to help make humanity multi-planetary."
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SpaceX Delays Plans To Send Space Tourists To Circle Moon More

SpaceX Delays Plans To Send Space Tourists To Circle Moon

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  • Waiting on NASA (Score:3)

    by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Monday June 04, 2018 @08:24PM (#56728206)

    Latest estimated date for SpaceX's first NASA manned test flight is January 2019.

    Makes sense that SpaceX won't fly private passengers on Dragon 2 in 2018 before NASA approves the vehicle for flight and sends up their own test astronauts.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kbonin ( 58917 )
      NASA is probably trying to delay certification of any manned SpaceX flights until its corporate masters at ULA get their SLS/Orion certified. Be interesting to see how much longer NASA stretches this out. Makes me sad, NASA today is not the NASA I looked up to as a kid...

      • You would not say that if you knew someone who worked on the lunar module program. NASA was no picnic back then, either.

        I guess Heinlein was right, when he wrote about an entrepreneur running a successful space program. In fairness to NASA, they had to do all they did first, before this was possible.

        • In fairness to NASA, they had to do all they did first, before this was possible.

          As a proxy war with the Soviet Union, the space race was WAY better than a real war.

          But otherwise it violated the basic principle of sharpening your ax before cutting down the tree. We should have spent the first decade pouring billions into better computers, better alloys, better robotics, better polymers, etc. before shooting for the moon.

          Fifty years later, we are finally getting close to the point where going to the moon actually makes sense.

          • Re:Waiting on NASA (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Monday June 04, 2018 @10:18PM (#56728674) Homepage Journal

            We should have spent the first decade pouring billions into better computers, better alloys, better robotics, better polymers, etc. before shooting for the moon.

            And Ferdinand Magellan should have waited for inertial navigation.

            Of course, that's silly. A good deal of technology was developed for Apollo, including the integrated circuit. But you could say the same thing today - that we need to develop better technology before we should consider such a mission - that you could have said in 1960. At some point you have to go and that generally happens as soon as it's first possible.

          • We should have spent the first decade pouring billions into better computers, better alloys, better robotics, better polymers, etc. before shooting for the moon.
            Why? the alloys proved good enough. What could they have improved?
            The computing power of the moon orbiter, lander and return vehicle combined was less than a washing machine in the late 1990s had. And that was enough: why having better (more advanced) computers when the ones ad hand were fully adequate?

      • Crew Dragon has not yet flown. You're complaining about NASA not certifying something that hasn't flown? Their requirement to fly a few missions in the same configuration seems perfectly reasonable to me, and perfectly reasonable to SpaceX too.

  • How many tourists have already made it to low-earth orbit? And some were already talking about orbiting hotels. The technology is there - the economics is not.
    • I don't think the price tag was ever mentioned. One multi-billionaire willing to shell out a billion plus can change those economics in a heartbeat. If they are that much of an enthusiast, it is likely that the only thing holding them back from spending their whole wad is the desire to do it more than once or to eventually join an underground Moon or Mars colony.
      • The billion plus would certainly help, but would not guarantee anything. If will take far more than a few billion to develop a technology that will supersede the current one to lift stuff to LEO and beyond, while doing it at a cost affordable to the masses. The very rich can currently buy themselves a ticket, as it has already happened. But, that's it. As long as it all hinges on chemical rockets, only the very, very few with very, very deep pockets will be able to do this. The economics is not there, beca

        • I was talking about a billion plus for a single ride, not to get the masses to orbit. As to how much it would help, it is more than enough to fully pay for the development of SpaceX's Dragon 2. This is why we are entering the age of commercial manned space travel. The costs are now within the range of the resources of some individuals to fully fund not only flights, but the development.

          As to your expansion of the subject, I doubt we will ever achieve affordability for the billions of people in our "masses"

  • Duh (Score:5, Funny)

    by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Monday June 04, 2018 @08:36PM (#56728274)

    Can't have the masses finding out the Earth is flat.

  • I'll have to look, but this has been known for months.

  • I know why. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's the auto pilot.

  • SpaceX has other priorities right now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Monday June 04, 2018 @08:48PM (#56728322) Homepage Journal

    Human-qualifying the Falcon Heavy, which would be necessary for tourist flights around the moon, isn't a priority for SpaceX. They're pretty much through with Falcon-9 engineering. Now they will make the Dragon 2 work, but their main direction is to eventually replace Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 heavy with a much larger methane and liquid oxygen rocket which is as powerful as Falcon Heavy with just one "stick" rather than three.

    There's a lot to be done between here and there, and every rocket engineering project has major risk, but this will potentially be a much more practical path to human space exploration than the SLS system which is an albatross around NASA's neck IMO and exists mainly as a pork-barrel jobs program.

    In fairness to NASA and congress, we didn't know that SpaceX would be this successful when SLS was approved.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DanDD ( 1857066 )

      No NASA rating is needed for SpaceX to fly humans anywhere in any of their rockets, unless those humans include NASA astronauts. However, NASA may get snippy and not allow any of their launch facilities for a SpaceX 'experimental' rocket, depending on the details of their lease agreement. If SpaceX were to have their own private launch facilities, then they'd have no significant restrictions.

      The short version is that SpaceX only needs to file a flight plan to 60,000 feet and man their rocket with an IFR r

      • No NASA rating is needed for SpaceX to fly humans anywhere in any of their rockets

        No, as we know from Mad Mike Hughes, any idiot can make a "rocket" and fly whoever is willing (in this case, only himself). But SpaceX thinks they will have the larger rocket soon enough that there is no point in playing these games with Falcon Heavy.

  • You have to read pretty deep into the details of the Apollo missions before you come across full descriptions of the day-to-day life on those spacecraft. It was uncomfortable, unpleasant, and often disgusting. Since there has been no miracle breakthrough in propulsion the weight constraints in 2020 are essentially the same as in 1964, and if built a Space-X around-the-moon tourist vehicle will be more like living inside a discarded can of ham and beans for a week than flying on a luxury aircraft.

    • Not having to carry a lunar lander will save a lot of mass that can be re-purposed to making living conditions a bit less hellish. You'll still probably cram into a small capsule for actual re-entry, but on the way there and back you could have a bigger "not-returning-to-Earth" cylinder for en-route living quarters.
  • Even if NASA would let them launch a civilian on a rocket that is not yet man-certified, they would hold back and serve the long-term customer first. I doubt they have spare builds of the manned Dragon 2 variation sitting around for a side-project - unless perhaps the would be riders are actually willing to shell out billions instead of millions.

  • Reality set in and they discovered it is harder to plan a safe and technically feasible trip for a casual tourist than it is to send seasoned astronauts who gladly did so at a very high risk for country patriotism in nothing more than a tin can with flashing lights.

    So the question is which commercial space company today wants to be the first to kill a tourist. Oh i am sure the stock price will go well that day. Having an optimistic guestimate of late 2018 was just for PR purposes, nothing more. It cer

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      Virgin Galactic is ahead on that race, they've already killed a pilot. (Though technically it was caused by his own mistake.)

  • I read that NASA wants a new rocket to be flown 7 times without incident before it will qualify form manned-flight rating. Since SpaceX has yet to fly their new Block 5 rocket with the redesigned high-pressure helium tank, they have yet to start the 7-flight count. This, apparently, pushes the flight-qualification complete to after the end of 2018.

  • Is there any way to force all the leading flat-earth movement leaders into this? Sure would be nice to shut them up.
  • There have been delays at the Model 3 crew capsule factory.

  • $$$ Always wins:

    1) Delays in NASA human rating is going to cost SpaceX $$ in salary which otherwise would have been spent on this.
    2) SpaceX is bringing in tons of contracts for launch services so they spend (and make!) $$ in this business model

    Between Engineers working Falcon Heavy and Dragon 2 and the $$ coming in from the existing launch business, there are no resources or incentives to make this timeline beyond newspaper headlines. And, if they can just keep talking about it, the headlines will get gene

  • This is not news. Literally not. (Score:3)

    by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @01:03PM (#56731786) Homepage

    Elon mentioned this last July 2017. How it became "news" now is a lot about the Koch brothers, the Murdochs, and a whole lot of other actors pumping out false memes to slow down Musk and through him the conversion to renewables and electric cars. This is war.

  • ...going to happen this year and most likely won't next year either. Until they make several test flights with astronauts.

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