SpaceX Says It Signed First Private Passenger To the Moon (nbcnewyork.com) 143
SpaceX announced Thursday that it's booked the world's first private passenger to the moon. The private aerospace company said on Twitter the unnamed traveler would board its Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) to the moon, where only 24 people have ever traveled. Only 12 of those people actually walked on the moon. NBC New York reports: SpaceX didn't reveal any details about the potentially historic voyage but said it plans to reveal the traveler's identity and more on Monday, Sept. 17. The company called the plan "an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling to space." Musk shared the announcement on his personal page but remained tight-lipped as well. However, when asked if the passenger was him, Musk responded with an emoji of the Japanese flag.
Lemme Guess (Score:5, Funny)
Alice!
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Curse you, AC. That was going to be my schtick...
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"BANG, ZOOM!"
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Bah you newcomers, master Twardowski [wikipedia.org] is there already for nearly five hundred years. And unless the devil somehow managed to alter the contract again, he's still alive.
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Don't really care about who (Score:3)
what I want to know is:
How much does it cost?
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what I want to know is:
How much does it cost?
It costs very little to sign a passenger.
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"If you have to ask, you can't afford it."
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I bet there's SpaceX investors wondering the same exact thing.
whats next, tickets to mars?
Musk is losing it. this isn't business. this is a publicity stunt, that's not even original.
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It can be a business. Much like the Mir flights. If they can land the three F9H main stages back on site and reuse the rocket the costs might end up to be similar.
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yeah, he only needs to find 12 people with few billion to burn.
Maybe for TV (Score:2)
A Japanese man was the first commercial space passenger back in the day, working for a Japanese TV company. Maybe it's the same deal, TV company is paying for one of its staff to go. Essentially funded by advertising.
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Musks cars aren't that bad.
In fact, they're kinda too good.
The business of making them doesn't seem to be good.
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The business of making them doesn't seem to be good.
To whom? Musk has built the most desirable automobile brand in just a few years, and is pulling in approximately $10,000 per Model 3 at the moment. In theory, he's going to still make thousands in profit selling the lower-end Model 3s. GM is losing money on every EV they sell and Nissan is only maybe around the break-even point. Tell us again how the business of making Teslas is bad.
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Because he has to sell a 70k Tesla to make 10k, assuming that 10k is even true. Neither of us really knows.
That's the estimate produced by Munro and Associates, the leaders in the vehicle cost analysis business. It's a reasonable assumption.
What is the price of the GM and Nissan you fail to mention? Can Tesla break even at the same price?
No, because they are producing a superior automobile. However, Munro estimates that they will still make several thousand in profit selling the lower-spec model. It has less expensive content, so it costs a lot less to produce. There's still more profit in the higher-content model, which is why Tesla is focusing on filling those orders first. Musk would have to be a massive
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As far as a third party parting out the cost. They have no idea either.
Munro and Associates has been doing cost analysis for decades, and they've been getting feedback from automakers and suppliers on their analyses all along. Their experience with both suppliers and automakers and doing teardowns has let them get a very good picture of what it costs to build auto parts based on examinations of same.
So you compare against two cheaper cars and when called out on it you reel it back in and entirely fail to stand by your own point.
I stand by my point, you're moving the goalposts.
If Nissan or GM sold a car with $25k parts (according to you and your sketchy unreliable sources) for $70k I suspect (you note I state this as opinion not as fact like you do) that their profit margin would vastly exceed Tesla at the same price point.
If white were black you could get run over at the next zebra crossing. However, Tesla has lower overhead than those big automakers
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Of course they have more employees and facilities. They produce and sell orders of magnitude more cars!!!
And yet they would still have gone out of business without bailouts. The simple fact is that it doesn't matter how many cars they have sold, they are failures, just like you are at debate.
Bitcoin on the Moon (Score:2)
Wonder if it was Satoshi. If he's really Japanese.
Wasn't the first private passenger to the moon supposed to be on a SLS mission?
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Wonder if it was Satoshi. If he's really Japanese.
To me, it's obviously the private investor who secured the funding to take Tesla private.
This is his "Thank You!" from Musk for the funding.
Question for Slashdot physicists: Will a Boring Company Flamethrower work on the surface of the Moon . . . ?
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Nah, the first passenger is going to be Vernon Unsworth.
So Good (Score:3)
So amazing. This must mean they are weeks away from heading there. I'm so excited for them!
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Wouldn't this person need to go through a lot of training first? Training with the rest of the crew, who are presumably SpaceX or NASA personnel.
I wonder what the trip will be like. Apollo and the planned Russian vehicles were very basic in terms of things like sleeping and toilet facilities. Probably won't be very comfortable but hopefully some improvements have been made.
I wonder what they will wear too. Full suits are bulky and only really need for emergencies, mostly on ascent/rentry.
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Yet there has been a number of paying customers that have gone to the space station. I'd assume most all of those would have qualified for the Moon trip, which isn't that different from spending a week in orbit, actually a round trip to the Moon is just an orbit in its simplest form.
Even the release forms are probably the same.
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True. I still think it is possible for someone to pass the physical, sign a lot of release forms and make the trip. Whether it'll actually happen remains to be seen. At least any spacecraft SpaceX gets working will be more roomy then a Soyuz.
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The BFS is pretty big. It could conceivably provide a less claustrophobic space for a week long pleasure cruise than the ISS.
Take a look at this rendering of the BFS docked to the ISS [ee.co.za] for a sense of the scale of the thing.
They have been comparing the size of it to an A380 airplane (which seats 800). Were they to decide to send a tourist trip with 10 people aboard, the passengers would likely feel less cramped than the ISS astronauts. Estimating the cost of launch is tough, with the high-reusability goal
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Just to underline the massive size of the BFS, I looked up the numbers.
The ISS has an internal pressurized volume of 931.57 m3. That's not the usable space, just the pressurized volume.
The BFR/BFS is supposed to be 825m3.
So one BFS is in the same ball park as the entire ISS in terms of pressurized volume. Smaller, but in the same general ballpark.
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What planet do you live on or what reality do you live in? SpaceX themselves have announced that the first orbital tests won't be until 2020 ("or so").
Has SpaceX fanboi-ism reached the point where the company's own schedules are disregarded in favor of hallucinatory fantasies?
right (Score:3, Insightful)
Do we still take what Musk says seriously? I mean, how many times has he said something will happen at some time, and how many times has he actually followed on? For example, just last month he said he said he's taking Tesla private. Or the manned space flight, he has been saying "in two years" for past ten years. Or the Falcon Heavy test flight slipping multiple times, or the other flights of FH that were supposed to happen this year.
Don't get me wrong, he is doing amazing stuff, and I understand there are objective reasons for the deadline slips, and I am a big fan and wish him success. But it has come to the point where I will wait until he actually delivers something before getting excited. And I will definitely get excited when the Moon flight happens.
(How are we on criticizing Musk here? Am I good? Am I going to get crucified? Stay tuned to find out.)
Re: right (Score:4, Insightful)
Musk... Invented... Paypal...
It's hard to enumerate in how many ways that's inaccurate.
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He owned stock in Tesla and was part of the board. He founded SpaceX. Yes, he did not found Paypal, he was brought into the business after he tried to do a competitive business called X.com. His main claim to fame before that was selling Zip2 to Compaq. Which was supposedly some sort of micro-portal platform or directory. I can't remember exactly. Other people have founded similar businesses and gotten rich with venture funding afterwards like Paul Graham but don't seem to get the same amount of vitriol tha
Re: right (Score:1)
No one intelligent will criticize you here.
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Re:right (Score:5, Interesting)
What he has achieved with Tesla and SpaceX is nothing short of ... frankly, unbelievable. Before Tesla, there was no electric car marketplace. Now there is, and there's even competition.
And SpaceX is the #1 private space company in the world. Maybe #1 overall.
And now the Boring Company is making some important strides, too.
If anyone can bring (back) men to the moon, it's Mr. Musk,
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Before Tesla, there was no electric car marketplace. Now there is, and there's even competition.
You make Nathan Poe proud, my friend.
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If anyone can bring (back) men to the moon, it's Mr. Musk,
Would not wonder if the first private customer is a woman.
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It is bringing men (or women) near the moon. No one is landing on it.
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There was a pretty good electric car marketplace over a hundred years ago, even had charging stations all over NYC.
Shit there was even a steam motor marketplace for a while. Perhaps they'll comeback, burning powdered coal.
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You mean the same marketplace that would have been made by companies such as GM, who crushed their own electric cars so that nobody could buy them?
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I guess you never heard of vehicles like the Nissan Leaf.
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Tesla, Inc. (formerly Tesla Motors), founded in 2003
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
The Nissan Leaf (Japanese: ) is a compact five-door hatchback electric car manufactured by Nissan and introduced in Japan and the United States in December 2010, followed by various European countries and Canada in 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If Nissan had really wanted to make an electric car, they would have made one to compete with the GM EV1 in the early 2000's, especially after GM stopped making them. Nissan
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Yeah, the Tesla Roadster is the vehicle that changed the perception of electric cars.
Before that they were slow, light and almost concept-car in appearance and finish - GM EV-1. Everyone was thinking super-econo-box.
The Roadster was specifically designed for the task of demonstrating that electric cars can be cool. And having ridden in one at the time they came out, I can confirm that it was an experience like no other. The huge amount of torque and acceleration made them immensely fun, despite their sho
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The first Tesla Roadster was available for sale in 2008. It sold in teensy numbers. It was not made for the mass market. Musk then exposes his "masterplan" of moving down the cost chain to produce the Model 3. Well the thing is, the Leaf was already at that cost almost a decade ago. The main difference is both companies started their approaches from different ends of the price segment and now they are overlapping in a segment. Nissan built several electric cars along the years. But Li-ion technology only be
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Obligatory Simpson's quote (the Stonecutter's song).
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do, we do
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do, we do
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
We do, we do
Who robs gamefish of their site?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do, we do
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Garbled lyrics cut and paste (a version fairly widespread on the Intertubes for some reason.
The correct line 10 is:
Who robs cavefish of their sight?
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Do we still take what Musk says seriously? I mean, how many times has he said something will happen at some time, and how many times has he actually followed on?
Yes we do. He has a great track record on delivery and just a poor track record for timing.
Oh the flip side I 100% believe they have signed their first tourist to the moon.
For example, just last month he said he said he's taking Tesla private.
Something you can take very seriously given members of his C suite were pushing for it, and the withdrawal of the idea to go private resulted in the disgruntled resignation of the CAO. About the only thing you can conclude given the actions was that this privatisation was very real.
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The problem with saying "I 100% believe they have signed their first tourist to the moon" is that SpaceX and Musk already announced this, but for the Falcon Heavy in February 2017, saying two unnamed persons had paid significant deposits for the circumlunar trip. Is this going to be an annual announcement?
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Is this going to be an annual announcement?
Why not? It's not like any other company in the world announces something once and then never talks about it again.
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It's a safe bet. Want to put $500 on whether Musk flies tourist(s) around the moon?
Re:right (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we still take what Musk says seriously? I mean, how many times has he said something will happen at some time, and how many times has he actually followed on?
The flip side of that is how often has he actually been forced to give up? Like not on a particular timeline or event or scaling it back but abandon it altogether? Tesla is churning out cars. SpaceX is building rockets. Landing has gone from highly experimental to routine in a few years. We'll see if the F9 block 5 is really as reusable as they say or if that's more aspirational too, but it's probably more reusable than the block 4. The Falcon Heavy flew... eventually and nailed 2/3rds of the landing on the first try.
We know Musk wants to put people in space. We know Musk wants to go to Mars. As long as he's in charge at SpaceX they're developing the Raptor methalox engine. They are developing the BFR/BFS. They are pursuing manned flight through the Commercial Crew program. They're making space suits. He's not some loon building a rocket in his back yard, they got engineers capable of doing it. Doing 20 satellite launches at $60 million a year is a billion dollar revenue stream, so they got money too.
I'm pretty sure that if you'd like to book a Moon trip then Musk is the right person to go to and that he'll eventually deliver. In that sense getting in first in line might be a good idea no matter when the doors open. Musk wants an Apollo program, how can we get to Mars in less than a decade not a plan that takes 20-30 years. I don't think he can pull that off without Apollo-level funding too, but then again sometimes it brings out the "they said it was impossible so we did it" in engineers.
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They're making space suits.
Let's call them flight suits.
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Half a dozen times when it comes to SpaceX alone. That is, multiple versions of the Falcon and Dragon have been tossed in the trash.
Both of these things are true - but the 'rest of the story' (as they say) is that his track record isn't one of doing what he wants, but wha
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Both of these things are true - but the 'rest of the story' (as they say) is that his track record isn't one of doing what he wants, but what people will pay him to do.
I think this is a "is the glass half full or half empty" situation, is he a corporate puppet that follows the money or is he leveraging what others will pay him for to further his own goals. Nobody asked him for a rocket that lands or a methalox engine or the Falcon Heavy, yes NASA paid for many of the primary missions particularly early on but that's just good business. And it was work they previously did themselves or hired the Russians, it's not like they created make-work for SpaceX to do. The BFR needs
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Neither - it's a "choice between full unvarnished truth or fanboi half truths and spin" situation.
I could a couple of dozen dead aerospace companies that seemed to have all the qualifications for whatever it was they were trying to do. The problem isn't qualifications - it's money and SpaceX demonstrating the 95% of wh
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Do we still take what Musk says seriously?
Definitely more seriously than what you say, because...
For example, just last month he said he said he's taking Tesla private.
...that is a lie, and you are a liar. He said he was considering it, and had secured a source of funding, not that he was actually doing it.
Don't get me wrong, he is doing amazing stuff, and I understand there are objective reasons for the deadline slips, and I am a big fan and wish him success. But
...you are actually a big liar.
(How are we on criticizing Musk here? Am I good? Am I going to get crucified? Stay tuned to find out.)
Criticizing Musk is fine, telling lies is shit.
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Don't get me wrong, he is doing amazing stuff
By "amazing stuff", do you mean cocaine?
Some of his engineers do amazing stuff. Musk is just a figurehead.
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Some of his engineers do amazing stuff. Musk is just a figurehead.
Do you seriously think this bunch of engineers got together and organized Tesla, SpaceX and The Boring Company and they let Musk figurehead all three? Who are these miracle workers? I assume you must know at least a few of their names.
Or are they entirely separate groups of engineers doing amazing stuff and Musk is just the world's luckiest man to have coincidentally been made figurehead of multiple groups of amazing engineers when most people can't even manage to get themselves made figurehead of one amazi
Surprising... (Score:2)
.. they found someone with a lot of money who wants to die.
Space Loss Leader? (Score:4, Funny)
it's booked the world's first private passenger to the moon.
BAH -- you can charge peanuts for that. The real charges appear when you want to return to Earth.
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See, that's the cleverness of Musk again. He's charging someone for something that is free [wikipedia.org].
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BAH -- you can charge peanuts for that. The real charges appear when you want to return to Earth.
Well if one-way tickets were an option they probably should because they really are much more expensive to create. But short term you're probably bringing so many tools and supplies that returning just the crew is no big deal.
Pesonally I would wait (Score:2)
I thought most people knew not to buy and install V1.0 of anything. Apparently not people able to afford a moon trip.
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A Japanese Flag? Then... (Score:1)
More than 24? (Score:1)
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa (Score:2)
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These kinds of posts are the web equivalent of radio "numbers stations".