Gadgetory

SpaceX is known for having some pretty ambitious goals it is working on starting that whole human colony on Mars after all but now the company has added another ridiculous goal to its list it's going to try to send to people around the moon at the end of 2018 these astronauts won't be employed by NASA though their paying customers who approached SpaceX to do the trip we don't know who they are just yet but they've put down a sizeable deposit for the mission SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says the trip should take about a week to pull off the two customers will launch on top of the Falcon Heavy that's the souped up version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket that's supposed to fly for the first time this summer and the passengers will ride inside the crew Dragon capsule an upgraded version of the dragon cargo capsule SpaceX has already been developing the crew dragon to carry astronauts to and from the station for NASA as part of the Commercial Crew program apparently the vehicle can do just fine carrying people near the moon too the plan is for the crew dragon to loop around the moon go a bit out into deep space and then come back to earth all in all a trip that spans between 300,000 and 400,000 miles the vehicle will mostly be automated but if there's an emergency the passengers may have to step in to get back the crew dragon will re-enter Earth's atmosphere and land the passengers hopefully gently it's a unique mission for SpaceX because it'll officially put it in the space tourism business so far the company has launched satellites for commercial companies and cargo for NASA and SpaceX will be launching people soon too but those riders will be NASA astronauts if it pulls this off it'll be the first time private citizens have traveled this far out into space while this is new territory for SpaceX the moon mission sounds an awful lot like another upcoming space mission one that NASA wants to do right now NASA is building a brand new rocket called the Space Launch System or SLS and a crew capsule called Orion together the pair is meant to carry astronauts into deep space and onto Mars someday the SLS hasn't flown yet but the plan is for the rocket to fly for the first time without Kru in late 2018 but recently NASA said I was going to look into maybe putting people on the first flight of the SLS possibly for a mission in late 2019 that trip will take a two-person crew riding inside the Orion crew capsule on an eight or nine day mission around the moon and back hmm that sounds familiar so with this moon mission announcement SpaceX seems to have created a bit of a space race between the public and private sector the company is sending the message that it can do what NASA plans to do only faster it seems like a political move for SpaceX to since the new administration may be more interested in using the private space industry SpaceX's Falcon Heavy looks to be significantly cheaper than the SLS so officials may be interested in using the more cost-efficient option to explore space instead of what NASA is building but there are a few big caveats to consider first of all NASA's vehicles have a lot of support in Congress so they probably won't be replaced by SpaceX anytime soon plus SpaceX is terrible about meeting deadlines the Falcon Heavy was originally supposed to debut in 2013 or 2014 but his flight has been repeatedly pushed back to this year there are also some questions of safety within the past two years two of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket have exploded elin argues that the Falcon 9 success rate is still quite high but that there will definitely be risk involved with the moon mission he says the customers are entering this with their eyes open good because it's going to be one hell of a view if the trip is successful Elon sees these private moon vacations as being a big source of revenue for SpaceX he thinks there's a market for at least one or two trips a year and the missions could account for 10 to 20 percent of SpaceX is revenue as for how much each mission will cost he estimates a little more than the cost of taking people to the International Space Station right now NASA pays between 70 and 80 million ziz in just one astronaut to the station on a Russian Soyuz rocket so if we're operating in that ballpark I guess I'm going to start saving now so Ilan clarified that these people aren't from Hollywood but Ilan announced this moon vacation while I was on vacation so I think it's only fair that I become one of the people to go for free