Reply With QuoteShould be very interesting to see how this progresses.
SpaceX to fly two tourists around Moon in 2018
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39111030
In all likelihood it will slip to 2019 at least, but what amazing news. I wonder who they'll be?
Should be very interesting to see how this progresses.
It's just a matter of time...
Originally Posted by Caruso
This is fantastic bit of news, I wonder if they will take a step further in the future. I wonder if the ultimate goal would be something like asteroid mining?
I recently read a great book on the Apollo missions, and have just finished one on the Challenger disaster. The thing that stuck out for me was, despite the complexity and sophistication of the Shuttle, its missions were just so relatively pedestrian compared to the feat of flying around and then later landing on the Moon.
Having grown up during the era of the Space Shuttle (which at the time seemed awe-inspiring), the idea of going back to the Moon sounds daunting and intrepid and really exciting, and it's great that SpaceX is in the position to send people back there.
Goodness knows how much that trip will cost the paying astronauts. XCOR costs $150,000 a go for a suborbital flight. Another order of magnitude for a trip around the Moon, I'd guess.
$40 million is the going rate for a trip to the space station…
I wonder if they'll get back?
F.T.F.A.
I'll eat my hat if Space X ever send anyone round the moon, let alone in 2018. Not a chance.
Hopefully two leading figures of the Flat Earth society, then they can put all that nonsense to bed.
Thought I'd go me self like. Wont be more than a few hundred, and any one can fly a re entry vehicle.
Their ultimate goal is to colonise Mars. http://www.spacex.com/mars
2018 is just nonsense. 2025, maybe.
I just love the bit that he is already taking monies for the trip. The guy is a chancer god genius..
Fas est ab hoste doceri
A lot of monies! Sell a dream........
Personally I don't see the attraction of colonizing Mars, except for the 'Everest' effect: it is there so some people just need to reach it. In the practical sense, Mars is as deadly as the Moon, there is no life (as far as one can tell now with what the rovers have managed to glean - maybe the green men keep hopping around them out of sight of the cameras...), and the gravity well is just deep enough to make landing on it and taking off a lot harder than on the moon, or on an asteroid (in the latter case, you can just dock a spaceship to it).
If one wants to colonize a heavenly body that forces you to wear a spacesuit to walk around on it, has light but still marked gravity so your intestines don't try to colonize your skull, and has some water, the moon is far more practical. Only one light second away, so you can communicate with home, too.
Otherwise, pick a fairly large asteroid, hollow it out (while mining it for all the metals in it, and selling them), set it to spin and build a terrarium inside with spin-induced artificial gravity. Anyone who reads some SF now and then knows that... ;-)
What hat do you have?
Maybe the Kardashians?
And hopefully they'll just keep going!
If I recall correctly, you don't believe that this is a feat that even NASA has managed - so I can see why you're sceptical about this one.
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