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We're going to the moon again!

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BDL:
SpaceX is now announcing the first private passenger to orbit the moon! You know, I think this may be the most excited I've ever been so far! Congratulations, Elon Musk. And all the SpaceX scientists and engineers, too. I hope NASA starts sending astronauts to the moon again. It's been too long.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zu7WJD8vpAQ

bknight:

--- Quote from: BDL on September 17, 2018, 08:58:12 PM ---SpaceX is now announcing the first private passenger to orbit the moon!
You know, I think this may be the most excited I've ever been so far!
Congratulations, Elon Musk. And all the SpaceX scientists and engineers, too.
I hope NASA starts sending astronauts to the moon again. It's been too long.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zu7WJD8vpAQ

--- End quote ---

So is the guy or the right the passenger?

BDL:

--- Quote from: bknight on September 17, 2018, 10:35:51 PM ---
--- Quote from: BDL on September 17, 2018, 08:58:12 PM ---SpaceX is now announcing the first private passenger to orbit the moon!
You know, I think this may be the most excited I've ever been so far!
Congratulations, Elon Musk. And all the SpaceX scientists and engineers, too.
I hope NASA starts sending astronauts to the moon again. It's been too long.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zu7WJD8vpAQ

--- End quote ---

So is the guy or the right the passenger?

--- End quote ---

The Japanese guy is the passenger. His name is Yusaku Maezawa.
He's an artist. And he's planning to bring (6, probably?) other artists with him. I'm not sure at all about how these artists are going to pilot the craft or how they’ll fix any engineering problems that may arise, but nonetheless - there'll be a couple artists going around the moon.
Elon Musk was asked if he was going go with him and he basically answered "I don't know, maybe." in a joking way.

Peter B:
I skimmed through the broadcast.

What I saw was interesting, but I think they're highly optimistic if they expect that lunar mission to happen when they announced (2023 I think), given how much the first launch of the Falcon Heavy was delayed.

I also hope SpaceX has a good executive structure in place so it doesn't have to rely on Musk himself to achieve results - he's been getting himself into the news for the wrong reasons too often in the last few months: the Thai cave submarine fiasco followed by the paedophile accusation (and now he's being sued over it); the announcement of his intention to make Tesla a private company followed by a reversal a week later; his Trump-like criticism of the media; and some unhelpful criticism of Tesla skeptics...

Peter B:
Some further thoughts...

- The spacecraft's landing system is interesting. Two of its three legs are moveable, and it also has a pair of control surfaces near the nose. According to the information, these four control surfaces steer the spacecraft as it dives into an atmosphere at a high angle of attack, while its speed drops to under supersonic. The spacecraft then turns vertical to fire rockets to land. Sure, it all makes sense - at this stage of the mission the spacecraft is going to have a high volume for low mass, so it's going to have a relatively low terminal velocity.

But what interests me is that the one spacecraft design appears to apply for landings on Earth, Moon and Mars, which (obviously) have very different amounts of gravity and atmosphere (unless there was something I missed when I skipped bits). So I assume they have robust maths to demonstrate that this method will work with a Mars landing rather than just an Earth landing, which was all they appeared to demonstrate.

- The spacecraft appears to store some cargo under its base, in the space between the engine bells and the stage skirt. I assume the logic is that the spacecraft's engines fire up only when its up so high there's virtually no atmosphere to conduct or convect heat from the combustion chamber to the adjacent cargo pods. But again maybe that's something I missed as I skipped through the video.

It'll be interesting to read what industry experts have to say about all this.

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