Space Tourist Trips To the Moon May Fly On Recycled Spaceships 95
thomst writes "Rob Coppinger of Space.com reports that UK-based private company Excalibur Almaz plans to offer commercial lunar-orbital tourist missions based on recycled Soviet-era Soyuz vehicle and Salyut space stations, using Hall Effect thrusters to power the ensemble from Earth orbit to the Moon and back. The company estimates ticket prices at $150 million per seat (with a 50% profit margin), and expects to sell about 30 of them. Excalibur Almaz has other big plans, too, including ISS crew transport, Lagrange Point scientific missions, and Lunar surface payload deliveries. It expects to launch its first tourist trip to the Moon in 2014."
Bullshit (Score:3)
Trips around the moon for paying tourists in 2 years time? Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.
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Im going to go ahead and put my implausibility meter to full
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares about sustainability with business? Lots of businesses have no such need; they get in, make a bunch of money, and that's the end of it; as long as the owners are able to walk away with a pile of cash, that's good enough for them.
Not all businesses need to continue to grow without end. That's mainly a requirement of publicly-traded companies because shareholders expect it, but private businesses operate very differently.
If these business owners think they can get a few dozen rich people to pony up $150M apiece for Moon tickets, at a claimed 50% profit margin thanks to recycled Soviet hardware, that's a nice hunk of profit to walk away with after 5 years or so.
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Here's hoping that's not due to catastrophic accidents. (And no, I'm not trying to be flippant.)
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you'll get the initial surge of customers only to have it dwindle to almost none .
You are assuming that they can't cut costs. If they can pull this off (unlikely), then once they pay of the R&D and find ways to be more efficient, they should be able to cut the costs significantly. As the volume of customers goes up, they should be able to cut costs even more.
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Also: A Soyuz isn't exactly a yacht. I can see some billionaire getting claustrophobic or stir crazy and deciding to go for a long walk out a small hatch...
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Well instead of giving CEOs a huge bone us, or a golden parachute when they leave their beleaguered companies, many may find the idea of blasting them into space a refreshing concept.
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My first thoughts were "Who?". Then "What launches have they already done?"
All I could find is that they're using recycled Soviet spacecraft and space station(s). That's fine and dandy. Just because you buy a bunch of hardware, it doesn't mean you have a functional space program. From what I read, the don't, and aren't planning, any sort of launch system. They'll be dependent on someone elses rockets. I guess that saves a lot of headaches, assuming they can buy enough
Better use for the money (Score:1)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Russia [wikipedia.org]
She may not look like much... (Score:1)
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Yes, but can it make the Kessel run in 12 parsecs?
Only if you can fit it into Millennium Falcons cargo hold.
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An immortal line. Still, I prefer instead quoting:
"You buy this ship, treat her proper, she'll be with you the rest of your life."
"That's because it's a death trap."
Lunar orbit only? How lame (Score:3)
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Yeah. Not to mention the exciting "whoosh" sound you make during re-entry.
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Actually, I sort of agree with the GP.
I would love to visit New Zealand--I hear it's beautiful. But I'm not sure I'd want to just fly over the country at 30,000 feet and then come home.
Similar thing here. Traveling 500,000 miles or so to visit our nearest space neighbor and then not landing would be frustrating. Imagine how Jim Lovell must have felt about traveling to the Moon twice--but never landing there.
Avoid having to fake the entire landing again (Score:1)
If they only promise you a "flight to the moon and back", without ever leaving the capsule, they don't have to cut a deal with NASA to rent the sound stage that was used to fake the lunar landings back in the 60s and 70s.
I understand that NASA has since replaced the gray sand on that set with red sand in preparation for "manned Mars landings".
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Space Racketeers (Score:5, Insightful)
Several articles on /. along these lines recently. Humble beginnings from actual private space enterprise closely followed by science fiction from space charletons.
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With another price point it has good B-movie potential.
Plot: What is a struggling city to do? Gift high-risk vacations to city employees having high-paying pension plans.
With $150 million per trip, those pension plans must be very high paying to make this worthwhile.
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science fiction from space charletons
Charleton's Chews, I used to love those things.
Here's a free tip: don't try to use words in print that you've never seen in print without a dictionary. I hear there's some free ones on the internets.
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I always appreciate it when intellectually superior people condescend to take a few moments of their precious time, usually employed in the grand betterment of humanity, to point out my minor errors and mental deficiencies.
Well, it's a tedious job, but someone has to do it. Of course, if you don't want help, and just want to go through your life looking like a total chucklehead simply because you won't accept some help because you're so fucking great already, that's totally your prerogative, and I'll try to remember not to interfere with it.
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Try not to get too upset
Too upset for what?
Very classy behaviour on your behalf considering many visitors to this site are ELSers.
It's good advice no matter what language you're writing.
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Innocuous
Yeah, there's lots of us. If you don't like it don't make stupid spelling mistakes in forums known for their arrogant masses.
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Your concern should be less about upsetting the "delicate sensitivities of the arrogant masses" and more about not appearing to be a moron when you're trying to impart something you feel is insightful and worthy of discourse and commentary. People will be more likely to pay attention and respond thoughtfully to your insights if your spelling and grammar are at least indicative of a certain minimum level of thought behind your posts.
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Man, this whole thread could have been avoided if drinky had just stuck a " :-P " in his spelling correction. Internationally recognized symbol for "I'm being a snarky douche, but don't take it too seriously." :-P
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Sooner or later there will be viable space tourism, and further exploration. Having commerce dipping in it will only make development go a lot faster than if you have to wait for NASA et.al. to do it.
I just finished rewatching Firefly. It's a bit further in the future, but when they talked about recycled space ships, for some reason I immediately had to think of Serenity.
spending that much money (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:spending that much money (Score:4, Insightful)
When you're 60+ years old and have tons of money, but not that much time left on the Earth, you don't really worry so much about the risk of such ventures. Just being able to go to the Moon is a once-in-a-lifetime thing and only a very tiny number of people have even done it so far. Just like it wouldn't be that hard to find people willing to take a one-way trip to Mars despite the extreme risk there, I don't think they'll have much trouble finding people willing to take the risk of traveling to the Moon in a recycled Soviet capsule (esp. if they can do it once successfully to prove they can do it). The question is if they'll find enough people with the required funds willing to do it; however, the Russians didn't have that much trouble finding rich people willing to spend $20M on a ticket to LEO, so it's possible.
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Health requirements? I don't think those apply in Russia. Also, John Glenn was able to ride on the Shuttle when he was older than that.
Finally, a passenger dying on takeoff isn't a financial liability. It should be obvious that anyone who goes up on one of these trips would sign a waiver. We're talking about sending people to the moon here, this isn't something where standard consumer-protection laws apply, and again, don't forget we're talking about Russia here. Where else do you think they're going t
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Even in America, it's totally possible to sign away all liability on risky stunts.
That doesn't seem to stop your estate, your insurance company, et cetera.
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What exactly are you talking about?
Try this: go skydiving, and forget to pull the ripcord so you die. Then, get your family to sue the skydiving company. See how far it goes.
Or better yet, go travel to Russia, and go skydiving there. Get yourself killed, and then see if your family can sue the skydiving company there. Good luck with that.
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Try this: go skydiving, and forget to pull the ripcord so you die. Then, get your family to sue the skydiving company. See how far it goes.
A quick google search shows that numerous cases like this have made it to court, when you would expect it to just be thrown out if you can actually sign away all your liability.
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Anything can make it to court. I can sue you for annoying me on Slashdot if I want. It won't go far, as it'd be dismissed right away, but it'd get to court.
Anyway, don't forgot point #2: they're in RUSSIA. The US legal system has no jurisdiction there, and they tend to be pretty lax about legal matters over there.
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You have to realize, however, that Russia (where any such space missions would be flown from) and Australia are incredibly different countries. Australia isn't much different than the US or UK as far as the court system goes. Russia's legal system is probably more similar to some random subsaharan African country.
However, in your example, also remember the guy never signed a waiver saying he knew the risks (even though it should have been obvious). At least here in the US, any time you do something inher
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Even in America, it's totally possible to sign away all liability on risky stunts.
Depends on the state. There's an entire branch of law (contract law) that revolves around what rights you can and can't sign away. When you buy lift tickets in California, for instance, there's a whole contract that goes with the purchase that's 100% non-enforceable because the state doesn't allow you to sign those rights away.
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Here in the 21st century, if you live in the developed world and have that kind of money... you have plenty of time left on Earth. Heck, even without that kind of money the odds are you still have plenty of time left on Earth.
So this 'excuse' is bogus.
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It depends on exactly how old you are, and what kind of genetics you have. If you're 70, even if you're super-rich, you likely only have about 15-20 years left at the most, and a lot of that is going to be just puttering around a golf course. You're not going to miss that much if you decide to risk that for a trip to the Moon and you don't succeed in returning.
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Yeah. After all, you won't miss your family, or your friends, or.. you're a clueless idiot.
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Yes, because mega-wealthy people like Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs are such selfless, caring, family-loving people who are more interested in being good grandfathers than doing whatever makes them happy, and if they were 75 wouldn't dare risk their lives and deprive their grandchildren of another 10 years of their warm presence.
You clueless idiot.
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So, how low of an orbit would you have to be in to pop the hatch, jump towards the surface, and have your corpse end up on the moon?
I mean, yeah, you'd be dead, but you'd be a legend. Most epic suicide ever.
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That's space for you. There's very rarely another rocket on the pad ready to go in the next week or two. The ISS (and Mir before it) of course has a docked vehicle that can make a descent but any problems on the way up are potentially a one way trip.
On the other hand, the obvious scam is obvious. You can't make a rocket appear instantly by just adding money. It takes time to build those launchers even if you've got the distraction to the marks of the middle step alrea
Interested in a lunar voyage? (Score:3)
No? Okay. I'm easy going. I take no for an answer. I understand.
Soooo, I have this great bridge [wikipedia.org] I want to sell you.
Energy Economics? (Score:3)
I wonder just how much of the "costs" are associated with each element of a trip (not specifically the trip in TFA, which I haven't read). I would guess that energetically, getting out of the earth's gravity well is going to cost by far the most - beyond that (and presuming infrastructure is in place - a big presumption I know), energetically things become easier. I guess what I am musing on is whether space tourism might become something slightly feasible if there is a destination.
Beyond weightlessness and seeing the earth's curvature, super rich paying to go to the ISS has always seemed like a bit of a dead-end. The ISS isn't for tourists, and so you are left with a mental image of them floating about on a science base just throwing money about the place and everyone else going "who is the dick with the cash on-board?". Now if the destination was specifically a tourist moon base and you went there for a month then it might seem like it had some sort of point. Fixed costs to get that running would be crazy - but ongoing costs might be affordable (energy from PV, moon H2O providing water & oxygen - with full reclamation).
Wishful thinking that it would ever happen or that I would have enough money to do it if it did exist! But better to do that than what has been allowed to happen in society over the last 30 years of sitting about becoming a reductive species, more interested in silly gewgaws than true hope and progress.
While you're on that recycled ship... (Score:2)
Hall Effect thrusters?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hall effect thrusters are NOT high thrust devices. He's not talking three days to Luna, more like three MONTHS.
Each way.
Somehow, I'm not seeing this as terribly practical.
more likely impossible (Score:2)
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Perhaps that's what the Salyut is for?
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As I noted below [slashdot.org], hall effect thrusters are an odd choice for this kind of mission, but no, it wouldn't be months. They're talking about 100KW thrusters. Those would be able to get you there in days to weeks, not months. Still, I don't see the logic in them. You lose a lot of the thrusters' specific impulse efficiency by having to use a crap transfer trajectory.
The optimal transfer injection burn is a short, very strong impulse, not a long gentle one. A worst case (continuous burn all the way there, ju
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100 KW thruster, assuming pretty near 100% efficiency - about 25 pounds thrust.
Salyut-3 (chosen arbitrarily) - ~19000kg. Plus reaction mass, of course.
Acceleration, not counting reaction mass - ~0.00001g.
Time to escape speed (assuming escape speed actually works the same for low acceleration as it does for high acceleration - it doesn't) - ~55 days.
Note that the deltaV required for escape speed is ~
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100 KW thruster, assuming pretty near 100% efficiency - about 25 pounds thrust.
Can you show your work on that? I did some questionable math and came up with ~5000N. Reading the hall effect thruster article [wikipedia.org] suggests 1.35kW produces 83 mN. That certainly sounds like you're much closer than I, but I'd just like to see how you got there. If it's true, you're right: that's a completely unreasonable for transfers, and would only be useful for minor corrections to existing trajectories.
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Hmm, 16000 m/s exhaust speed assumed. Which is typical for Hall-effect thrusters.
So, m*v^2/2 = energy required.
m = 200,000 W/v^2 = 200,000W/256,000,000 m^2/s^2.
m = 0.0008 kg/s
thrust = exhaust speed * mass flow rate. 16000 * 1/1280 = 12.5 N. Hmm, left the decimal off the 2.5 pounds thrust, I see.
Pick a lower exhaust speed, get more mass flow rate for a given power input, of course. But to get 5000 N, you're talking
Milli Newtons to the Moon (Score:2)
Hall effect thrusters have a good specific impulse and a great reliability record, but they have thrust in the milliNewton range, which means 6 months to a year or so to get to the Moon. Now, you could imagine putting a whole bunch of them together to get a higher thrust, but then, where is Excalibur going to get the 100 megawatts or so they would need for reasonable trip times?
Excalibur would be better off trying to get some of the flight qualified NERVA rockets refurbished, or do what Space Adventures [spaceadventures.com] p
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Excalibur would be better off trying to get some of the flight qualified NERVA rockets refurbished
Actually, that is exactly what Musk is pushing NASA to do. And NASA is wanting to do it.
Hall effect thrusters? (Score:4, Informative)
For those unfamiliar with the tradeoffs: Hall effect thrusters make fairly efficient use of the reaction mass - about 2000s, compared to ~250 for solid rockets or ~300-400 for liquid rockets. That means a considerable increase in your delta-v - since you only need 10-20% as much reaction mass for the same impulse, you get 5-10x more delta-v. Great, right?
The trouble is that you need a power source. Liquid fuel rockets just burn the propellant. Hall effect thrusters (and other ion thrusters) need a power source in addition to the propellant.
This is a great tradeoff for stationkeeping on satellites - you only need tiny amounts of thrust, so you can easily generate enough power using solar cells or a RTG. Thus the very efficient use of reaction mass means a much longer useful life, or more useful payload in your satellite for a given launch mass, etc. It's just plain more efficient.
But this isn't like that. They seem to want to use them to perform the Hohmann tranfer [wikipedia.org]. That means having a very high thrust for a short duration - not just because you want to get there more quickly, but because it's much more efficient than a long continuous burn.
They're talking about 100KW. That seems low. Ballpark 5000 newtons of thrust... Compare to the Apollo command/service module at ~90,000 newtons. Thus they'll need a fairly long burn at that power. How the heck are they generate that kind of power for a long duration?
Honeymooners 2016 (Score:1)
"To the moon, Alice!"
Alice: "Okay."
Isle of Man (Score:1)
Excalibur Almaz is NOT a UK company. It is an Isle of Man (or Manx) company. It's been said for a few years that the Isle of Man is the fifth most likely country to be next to put a man on the moon. I guess this project is part of that.
Tax Havens before USA/China/Russia? (Score:2)
The reason the Isle of Man [wikipedia.org] is a hub for this kind of activity is because it's a a tax haven. It's not a continent sized country full of engineers, launch facilities and research universities: more like 200 square miles in total. So while it might be the fifth most likely country to put somebody on the moon, this is mostly because it's an attractive place to have your offices.
By this rationale, I guess Monaco, Liechtenstein, Andorra and the Seychelles are more likely to put a man on the moon than the USA, Ru
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Ah, the old 'tax haven' meme. The Isle of Man may have a lower tax regime than your locality, but according to the OECD (amongst others) it actually it is one of the most well regulated financial jurisdictions in the world, and it has tax transparency agreements with virtually all the mainstream (and a lot of less mainstream) countries too. And certainly better than that dirty little secret : the 'corporate and tax haven' that is Delaware. (Have you any idea just how easy it is to create a blind trust in De
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[...] it would be quite fun if the Manx flag did fly on the moon [...]
Is that some kind of running joke?
Legit Hardware (Score:2)
Amazing fact: in a world of vapor projects Excalibur-Almaz is one of the few new-space companies with flight proven hardware. The VA capsules and TKS modules are heritage Soviet equipment with upgrades. This is some of the finest spacecraft designed by one of the greats of the early space age.
Hopefully they actually get to (lunar) orbit with paying customers. Also, 15X reusability plus integration on Falcon has strong cost implications after first flight.
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