Are you talking about unmanned mission? Because he specifically mentioned crewed mission.

$82 millions according to the announcer at Kennedy Space Center while I was waiting for the Falcon 9 launch.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;space-travel-per-seat-cost-soyuz-2016-9" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;space-travel-per-seat-cost-so...</a>Russia currently charges $58 million per seat to the ISS, with the price expected to increase to $80ish million by 2018.

If I remember correctly, the price of a Soyuz seat is around $20,000,000USD for tourists, with NASA&#x27;s price to fly on Soyuz being much higher per seat.

Appears to be around $80M per seat. Great graph of how it increase from $20M in 2008 to $80M today after NASA permanently grounded its space shuttles:<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;space-travel-per-seat-cost-soyuz-2016-9" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;space-travel-per-seat-cost-so...</a>

At least from NASA&#x27;s standpoint, looks like they budget single-digit $Billions for human spaceflight, out of a yearly budget in the range of $18B. I&#x27;m not sure how cleanly that can be broken down per-mission, since stays aboard the ISS can now exceed 12 months. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spaceflightnow.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;02&#x2F;nasa-outlines-fy-2016-budget-request&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spaceflightnow.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;02&#x2F;nasa-outlines-fy-2016-...</a>

For perspective, it cost about $200 million to get your name on an America&#x27;s Cup trophy.  So as billionaire vanity projects go, this is pretty reasonable.

On a different end of the spectrum, Emily Calandrelli is giving a $35M figure for the last ISS ticket: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;TheSpaceGal&#x2F;status&#x2F;836333012056842240" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;TheSpaceGal&#x2F;status&#x2F;836333012056842240</a>

A quote from an article on the Verge says &quot;Musk declined to comment on the exact cost of the trip, but said it was “comparable” or a little more than the cost of a crewed mission to the International Space Station.&quot;Does anyone have a rough estimate how much a manned mission to the ISS currently costs?

I wonder what the life insurance policy costs -- though perhaps in this case these individuals don&#x27;t need one due to their existing wealth.  I guess super-wealthy people just &quot;self insure&quot; eh?

&quot;Not me... yet!&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;RichardGarriott&#x2F;status&#x2F;836327841876738048" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;RichardGarriott&#x2F;status&#x2F;83632784187673804...</a>

interestingly his wife was president of a (now failed) space tech company:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Escape_Dynamics" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Escape_Dynamics</a>

Maybe Richard Garriot wants to survey his property (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Richard_Garriott#Other_accomplishments_and_interests" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Richard_Garriott#Other_accompl...</a>) from near-lunar orbit. ;)

Not sure everyone will see it that way. One could look at it as taking the whole &quot;wasteful private jet&quot; to the extreme. Think of the sheer amount of fuel burned in the earth&#x27;s atmosphere so a rich guy can fly in space.At least, I expect many will spin it that way.

&gt; I also think that spending money on a roundtrip to the moon is way better for humanity than spending it on champagne, caviar and cars.How? I&#x27;m not saying you&#x27;re wrong, but gut instinct is that automobiles are more useful to humans. I&#x27;d like to hear your thought process.

Same! I also think that spending money on a roundtrip to the moon is way better for humanity than spending it on champagne, caviar and cars.

Probably not them, but it made me think of these two... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;story.californiasunday.com&#x2F;mars-madness" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;story.californiasunday.com&#x2F;mars-madness</a>

At least it&#x27;ll be nice to have them off the planet for a couple of weeks.

What if it&#x27;s Larry Ellison and Travis Kalanick?

Hopefully it isn&#x27;t. In the event that something goes wrong, we need him here.

Nah, if Elon is going somewhere, it&#x27;s deeper underground with his giant bore.

I was thinking the same. Relevant xkcd <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;what-if.xkcd.com&#x2F;124&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;what-if.xkcd.com&#x2F;124&#x2F;</a>

I suspect Elon is saving himself for his Mars mission in 2031.

James Cameron?  He seems to have a penchant for this stuff.

Why would a figure with so much PR fire power tarnish it? If anything it would put space exploration front and center for so many young and adolescence people.

Not Leonardo di Caprio, he will stay behind even though there is enough room for two people on that return vehicle.Also, hopefully not Matt Damon.

&gt; Can&#x27;t wait to hear who booked this trip! Definitely one of the coolest ways to spend a lot of superfluous money :)Imagine it ends up being some celebrity, like Leonardo di Caprio (who has shown interest in space IIRC) or Lady Gaga. Don&#x27;t you think it would somehow tarnish the whole thing?

More practical, science-wise? Yes. Cooler? Definitely not.Sending humans to space has a very important non-scientific factor - human emotions and imagination. It&#x27;s an important driving force that&#x27;s also necessary until we bootstrap a proper profitable market that&#x27;ll do the driving.

It would be cooler if they donated it for sending more robots to Mars...

&gt; We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission.Can&#x27;t wait to hear who booked this trip! Definitely one of the coolest ways to spend a lot of superfluous money :)

I don&#x27;t think the world is that lucky.

&quot;We seem to have somehow miscalculated our trajectories and the vehicle is now permanently locked in low lunar orbit forever with no recourse. Sorry for the inconvenience.&quot;

How on Earth (pun intended) would that help?

Zuck going around the moon would make sense.He clearly has political ambitions, but he must acquire personality. Being an space-tourist would help.

This is what I&#x27;m referring to:&quot;...The draft report from the GAO, which is Congress’ investigative arm, also concluded that neither SpaceX nor the Boeing Co. is likely to conduct regular space taxi flights to the space station by 2018...&quot;<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geekwire.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;gao-journal-spacex-rocket-turbopump-cracking&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geekwire.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;gao-journal-spacex-rocket-turbo...</a>

The main factor supporting their claim is that they have a very strong incentive to be ferrying crew to&#x2F;from the ISS around this time, so barring any big mishaps with Falcon Heavy (supposed to be ready this summer&#x2F;fall), all the pieces should be in place if not by next year, then certainly just a year or two later. Which, as you mentioned, is just as impressive!

Huge SpaceX fan here, but I&#x27;ve heard from various news sources that the company is famous for aggressively posting dates and then slowly letting them slide. Might that be the case here? (Still, even if it&#x27;s 2 or 3 years, wow!)

That&#x27;s probably it. Not as much space I think, but life support for an extended period of time. This is one key difference between Dragon&#x2F;CST-100 and Orion: the latter is designed for extended deep space travel with full crew, and can support them accordingly, while the former are primarily LEO taxis with more limited deep space capabilities.

Probably not a ton of extra space for a multi-day trip?

Others will likely follow, per SpaceX, but I think this is a two person ride.&gt; &quot;Other flight teams have also expressed strong interest and we expect more to follow.&quot;

Do you have a source stating that the people crewing the Dragon would need to do anything at all? Won&#x27;t it just be on autopilot, what duties is the crew of the capsule expected to perform?

The two private citizens will need a support team in capsule unless they are experienced astronauts and have the technical skills to learn all the systems on the dragon crew capsule.

Im curious it might be two lovers, with intimate heavenly aspirations.

I imagine they don&#x27;t want to send too many people up at first because 1) it&#x27;s heavy and 2) there&#x27;s a non-trivial risk of mission failure.

I wonder if it is going to be only two people who are going to go. Will they add more people if they come forward with significant amount of money too?Seems to me like the cost of taking in another person will be negligible in comparison to the funding they could contribute. This is literally a one-in-a-lifetime experience

Apollo had manned space missions before that.

The cold war? A national effort? Dead crews during the project?I mean, I&#x27;m half joking, I believe that it is a possible objective, as much as it is possible to manufacture 500k Model 3s a year.. next year. Possible, but a monumental effort and something on which Musk strongly disagrees even with the top managers in his own companies.

Hey, you&#x27;re right. First flight of the Saturn V was November 1967. First trip around the moon was December 1968.

Ok, let&#x27;s put it like this: how much are you willing to bet that they&#x27;ll be sending two passengers around the Moon on board of Falcon Heavy&#x2F; Dragon 2 next year?

They are going to test the rocket later this year, and the rocket is based on the F9 design, so nothing done from scratch. The crew capsule is also just an enhancement of the capsule which travelled to the ISS and back again several times. It also is going to be tested with flights to the ISS before this planned moon mission. Once you exchange the F9 for the F9 Heavy, going to the moon is not really anyhow more difficult than going to the ISS. You need a bigger launch speed, but then you orbit the Moon and return back. A Moon landing however would be a distinctively different effort.

This announcement is considerably less vaporous than the Mars plan he announced.

I&#x27;m not gonna lie...I&#x27;d be fine with several directors resigning.

Musk did not invent PayPal. He founded x.com which merged with PayPal two years after PayPal was founded.He has also been clear that he had three goals:1) Expanding solar power use.2) Popularizing electric vehicles.3) Making human life multi-planetary.I am paraphrasing and perhaps understating his desired level of success.

Musk&#x27;s #1 goal from the beginning is to put a lot of people on Mars, and do it in a rather short time (per human-history scale). We&#x27;re talking a guy who literally invented PayPal just to make enough money to really get the project started. His other endeavors are as well, while laudable in their own right, really just ways of accumulating the resources to achieve that goal.

So, hmm, we wants to send people around the moon, a year and a half from now, with a rocket he never tested and with a capsule that never flew?
I expect half of the directors of SpaceX to resign in the next two days...

Also the moon is pretty boring and Elon Musk likes exciting things.

&quot;Relatively&quot; being very much a keyword here. Nothing about sending two people around the moon is easy, there&#x27;s a reason it hasn&#x27;t been done in several decades.

I disagree about the &quot;quick buck&quot;The surprising thing about this announcement is that its a private mission. SpaceX has long resisted private tourism, to pursue CRS and Commercial Crew missions. I&#x27;m sure several billionaires would have written a large check, long ago, to go into orbit.

Everyone replying is missing this oppositized JFK quote: &quot;We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.&quot;-JFK

The Apollo program also started with around-the-moon missions before the landing missions.

they went around the moon before landing on it, too.

We choose to not go to the moon, but do the other things, not because they are hard, but because they are relatively easy, and we can make a quick buck.

Landing on the moon to &quot;test&quot; the Mars landing makes almost no sense. The a moon is just to different, landing on mars can be trained much better on Earth or on Mars itself.The simuliertes are not enough to make it sensible if you don&#x27;t have another reason to land on the moon too.

Have they said they&#x27;ll test Martian equipment with Lunar landings? I&#x27;d guess it&#x27;d make a pretty poor testing ground, considering the cost of getting there.

Everyone&#x27;s always so cynical... They&#x27;re sending (presumably) two non-astronauts further than any humans have ever been. I assume there will be future milestones that probably include landing on the moon to test the Mars landing.

Dragon is only capable of crash-landing using its engines? I.e. there is not enough propellant, legs, etc... to do a soft landing? (not even considering take-off right now)

The Apollo LM first flew in earth orbit on the Apollo 9 mission in March 1969.  Its first test flight was only 4 months before the Apollo 11 mission landed one on the moon!  And the first all-up Saturn V flew unmanned in November 1967.  The incentives and funding were there very rapid development.

Well, they haven&#x27;t got a lander for one thing. The Apollo LM had its design finalised in &#x27;63, and only flew in &#x27;65. SpaceX would surely do it quicker now, with the benefit of experience, but from scratch to operations in a year for such a unique vehicle is quite unrealistic.

While this feat depends on hitting a lot of intermediate milestones - Falcon Heavy Test, Crew Dragon Unmanned to ISS, Crew Dragon manned to ISS, etc, there is no &quot;show-stopper&quot; that is apparent right now.I like how they have avoided committing to the much harder &quot;landing on the Moon and then return&quot; scenario.

Read the article: &quot;By also flying privately crewed missions, which NASA has encouraged, long-term costs to the government decline and more flight reliability history is gained, benefiting both government and private missions.&quot;

The COTS and Commercial Crew program have specifically been made so that Companies can reuse the hardware for other projects as well. This is the exact thing that NASA has hoped for.

I wonder what NASA is thinking about this? The NASA Commercial Crew program which helped fund the development of the Dragon was funded for manned flight to the ISS. I&#x27;m curious if they see this as part of the project scope?

This is exciting news. Some time ago, looking at the F9 Heavy, it seemed to me that SpaceX could fly to the moon with it anytime they decided to. Of course their focus is the Mars. But in the day and age of multi-billionaires and the commercial availability of space flights via SpaceX, this makes absolutely sense. Private funding could push space flights much quicker ahead.

It seems like a carrot and a stick because it also reinforces the &quot;SpaceX is special&quot; narrative.

In the same way that hitting a stuck bolt with a hammer is a strategy. It applies pressure sure, but you break your tools and the nut gets stripped.It seems to a preferred motivation method though.

&gt; Sometimes i wonder if that&#x27;s an strategy from the management team to put pressure in the engineers.Or simply a way to generate press and attention, including on Hacker News.

That&#x27;s always the case, in my experience.

Probably... the Falcon Heavy rocket has been &quot;only a year from its first launch&quot; for about 6 years. That said, I think they&#x27;re probably correct about it now

&gt; That&#x27;s an incredibly aggressive timelineSometimes i wonder if that&#x27;s an strategy from the management team to put pressure in the engineers.

Note also that SpaceX is going to start flying cargo in a derived-from-Crew-Dragon Dragon, so they&#x27;ll have more experience with the changes in Crew Dragon, and can practice propulsive landings on Earth for cargo before trying it for crew.

They&#x27;ve already had Dragon flights where they&#x27;ve said &quot;if there were humans aboard, they&#x27;d have been just fine&quot;, i.e. the Dragon&#x27;s life-support capabilities have been tested.You don&#x27;t have to have flown humans to test whether you can fly humans, you know you were able to maintain a breathable atmosphere, and you know you have enough fuel to launch a few hundred kilos of meatbags, food &amp; water.

Absolutely incredible. This will be the furthest that humanity has journeyed away from Earth in a very long time.However it is worth noting that there hasn&#x27;t been a single crewed Dragon flight yet. There are demonstator flights scheduled for this year though with the first NASA crewed mission slated for May 2018. That&#x27;s an incredibly aggressive timeline but if anyone can achieve it, SpaceX can.The long duration flight beyond the moon will be a fantastic proving ground, however.

They&#x27;re doing a Falcon Heavy launch beforehand (at least once) before this mission takes place.

Presumably they will test the spacecraft at least once before sending it out manned. We sent crewed capsules around the moon without landing during the Apollo program too.

You&#x27;re right I misread the testing part. I&#x27;d very much still like to know who those people are and what their thought process is.

Well the spacecraft will be tested multiple times before this mission and there are health and fitness tests before departure just like it says there. Both of those were addressed, I think you may have misread this.

Who are the two &quot;private citizens&quot;? Seems to be mere urge of &quot;universal human exploration&quot; to go around the moon and not landing on it, etc. isn&#x27;t doing much exploring, but rather taking a lot of risk on a manned spacecraft that has never been tested with people.

yeah, their insurance company would be furious :)

Something tells me they wouldn&#x27;t both go on the same trip, given the risk.

they don&#x27;t care, they own majority of voting rights and almost the stocks itself

just imagine the effects on Alphabet&#x27;s stock price

I would maybe guess Branson and Bezos as a stunt promoting private space tourism and thereby their space companies :)

I&#x27;m gonna make my tip, given Elon&#x27;s history:Sergey Brin and Larry PageTwo of his freind rich enough, geeky enough, to go first.

Did some more research, and yes, Apollo 13 was indeed the furthest in geocentric distance as well.

But the moon isn&#x27;t at a fixed distance.  It&#x27;s possible that one of the other cislunar or landing Apollo missions was more distant, geocentrically, even with their standard 69-mile lunar orbital heights.

Just looking up records: the furthest anyone has ever been from Earth is Apollo 13 who passed 158 miles above the lunar surface.I imagine that would be a pretty easy record to break, if you&#x27;re doing a translunar flight anyway then getting a bit higher doesn&#x27;t take much more energy (source: played a lot of Kerbal).On the other hand the passengers might prefer a close-up view of the Moon to a record.

&gt;A 2005 study Jennings co-authored counted 17 babies born to female astronauts after they had been in space.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;phys.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;2011-01-sex-space-houston-problem.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;phys.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;2011-01-sex-space-houston-problem.html</a>

According to stack exchange, it doesn&#x27;t [0]. If that&#x27;s wrong maybe I can fund a trip to space of my own by selling lead lined boxers.[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;space.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;14704&#x2F;do-astronauts-become-sterile-from-being-in-space-like-on-the-iss" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;space.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;14704&#x2F;do-astronauts...</a>

Source?&gt; The Mars Radiation Environment Experiment (MARIE) was launched in 2001 in order to collect more data. Estimates are that humans unshielded in interplanetary space would receive annually roughly 400 to 900 mSv (compared to 2.4 mSv on Earth) and that a Mars mission (12 months in flight and 18 months on Mars) might expose shielded astronauts to roughly 500 to 1000 mSv. [0][0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays#The_deep-space_radiation_environment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays...</a>

As long as you stay near the Earth (the moon is close enough), our magnetosphere will protect you from radiation.When you get interplanetary, like on a trip to Mars, radiation exposure becomes arguable the most difficult problem to solve.

Is it still a thing, where going to space makes you infertile due to radiation? I feel like I remember basically once you go into space (male or female) kids are off the table afterwards unless you have frozen your sperm or eggs beforehand. Not sure if that was solved at some point or not.

60-ish? More like 50-ish. I remember those landings and I&#x27;m nowhere near 60.Weirdest thing, I can&#x27;t delete this comment now that the other comment has been fixed.

No amount of data can convince a conspiracy theorist that they&#x27;re wrong (the new data are just part of the conspiracy).They&#x27;ll just say the new images are faked, just as they say the original missions were.

The flags have been bleached white by the unfiltered solar UV due to lack of lunar atmosphere

NASA actually has a post on what the statuses of the flags are; they are probably bleached or disintegrated.[1] Interestingly, I would guess that the flag most likely to have survived would be the one from Apollo 11, because it was too close to the lander, and got knocked over by the ascent module; it may have been covered with dust and protected, but this is only a remote possibility.note: the post says that the LROC shows shadows from the flags, but it seems highly unlikely they are pristine or even intact.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hq.nasa.gov&#x2F;alsj&#x2F;ApolloFlags-Condition.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hq.nasa.gov&#x2F;alsj&#x2F;ApolloFlags-Condition.html</a>

The LRO has provided great photos of Apollo landing sites with the LM base (and the Rovers for later missions) identifiable.Still looking for the tall black monolith, though.

There&#x27;s even the reverse - People who claim they can pinpoint the U.S moon flag with a telescope, trying their hardest to convince others the landings were real.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;Can-you-see-the-American-flag-on-the-moon-with-a-telescope" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;Can-you-see-the-American-flag-on-the-m...</a>

Finally the tin-foil hats can be satiated when these tourists see the 50-ish year old flag on the moon.

Finally. I am so so hyped for SpaceX&#x27;s development. Hopefully they can stay afloat to experience stability and a stage where they can sit on funding and provide credit for fusion and&#x2F;or antimatter research. Glad they&#x27;re here to give us a glimpse into the future of space travel.

I sure hope so! I wouldn&#x27;t want to be on that flight.The NASA article brought to mind a story of a well-known Cosmonaut knowingly launching in an unreliable vehicle because the politicians insisted. He died. He flew because he didn&#x27;t want his understudy to be killed in his place. (I&#x27;m sure someone on HN knows the story better than I do ...).

I know for a fact that NASA is still concerned about that Helium tank.

NASA agreed to do a study to see if they could place humans on the test flight. That seems to me like the NASA equivalent of saying &quot;Sure, I&#x27;ll look into that&quot; while trying to not look horrified.I&#x27;m pretty sure that study will conclude that this is a bad idea.

&quot;Trump&#x27;s monkeysphere&quot; ...I loved that. Thanks for a good chuckle.Downvotes be damned.

I&#x27;m pretty sure Musk is doing what&#x27;s reliably necessary to keep his companies running under Trump.An administration full of oil wealth and climate change deniers are a significant business risk when you make electric cars and have States banking photovoltaics.He needs to be within Trump&#x27;s monkeysphere.

Note that NASA, I believe at Trump&#x27;s urging, recently said they would try to place humans on the first flight of the Space Launch System (the new heavy lift rocket) - i.e., no unmanned testing first.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;15&#x2F;science&#x2F;nasa-looks-to-speed-timetable-for-putting-astronauts-in-deep-space.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;15&#x2F;science&#x2F;nasa-looks-to-spe...</a>Is Musk still maintaining a relationship with Trump? When Uber founder Travis Kalanick left Trump&#x27;s business council, Musk was still on it AFAIK. I wonder if Musk is doing this or announcing it for related reasons. Certainly Trump has a history, even in his short tenure, of pressuring businesses into announcements that suit his agenda. And the announcement seems to fit Trump&#x27;s pattern: Impossible, brazen bravado. (Musk gives the impossible some credibility, but that&#x27;s what is meant by lending someone your credibility.)It&#x27;s speculative, but it&#x27;s also sad and a bad sign when we must look for government interference in the free market at this level, to provide propaganda for the President.

I think it&#x27;s a bit of weird language. From comparing what specs I could find Energia had significantly greater LEO capacity (200% of Falcon Heavy), and a slight advantage in GTO payloads, a slight disadvantage at trans-lunar payloads and has no capacity at all for trans-Martian payloads where the Falcon Heavy can deliver 14,000kg&#x2F;14 tonnes&#x2F;30864.717lbs of payload.So I think they are claiming that title due to Energia dropping off after trans-lunar ranges assuming Falcon Heavy reaches &quot;orbit&quot; and then travels further beyond.

&gt; &quot;Falcon Heavy is due to launch its first test flight this summer and, once successful, will be the most powerful vehicle to reach orbit after the Saturn V moon rocket.&quot;SpaceX at its usual :) . By which criteria Energiya is less powerful vehicle to reach orbit than Falcon Heavy?

Well there&#x27;s a huge difference when talking about radiation exposures going to the moon and Mars. For one you don&#x27;t expect a solar event to happen, you really hope one doesn&#x27;t, when going to the moon. Going to Mars you expect a few.With cosmic radiation we&#x27;re talking about the difference between a few days and a year. Plus you have to have pretty good shielding when crossing the Van Allen belts.You can consider the Apollo missions the trial phases. We learned a lot there.

Probably they should. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13745315" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13745315</a>

AFAIK, those incremental tests in the past were done because we didn&#x27;t know the effect(s) space would have on humans. That&#x27;s not really an issue now.There&#x27;s not much point in saying &quot;Ok we&#x27;ve got this thing 98% safe let&#x27;s send up a chimp and see if we explode&quot; when you could just as easily not send up a chimp and get the results you need to get to the next level of safety, eventually reaching something reasonable to put humans in.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Great_ape_research_ban" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Great_ape_research_ban</a>There are ethical concerns and legal limitations regarding experimentation on some animals.

Shouldn&#x27;t they consider a staged approach, not unlike FDA trials. Start with a Laika dog, proceed with a chimp, as all other space programs have done in the past?Also, if this succeeds, what happens to Google&#x27;s moonshot projects? Is rebranding in the works?

Best news I&#x27;ve heard today, if I had that much $ I too would want to do something that only a handful of humans have ever experienced. If Elon reads this I will give you everything in my bank account and everything I will earn in the next 5 years to orbit the earth. It has been a dream of mine and seeing the privatization of space flight gets me so excited for the future. Sucks to be my kids as I hope I get to blow their inheritance on a trip to the moon.

Rockets (or any research) &gt; bombs any day of the week.Yes, my tax dollars going towards research (even indirectly) is better than the way most of my money is spent

The tax dollars we spent on this would probably have funded about twelve seconds of the Iraq occupation instead, so I&#x27;d say sure, easily worth it.

As a taxpayer (who was just reminded this past weekend of how much that is :-) I&#x27;m really glad that NASA had enough budget to spend on the Commercial Crew program. Given that the NASA budget of $18.5B[1] is a rounding error on the overall budget $3,540B[2], seriously it&#x27;s a half a percent. And commercial crew was only $1.2B [ibid] of that NASA budget. So less than .05%. Again rounding error.And with that money they are getting two different spacecraft that can fly missions. So I think it was a great way for NASA to contract out the development of a crew capsule they could use on their missions.That one of the companies that participated has done so in such a way that they can make a commercially feasible &#x27;tourist&#x27; vehicle out of it? That blows my mind.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nasa.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;files&#x2F;NASA_FY_2016_Budget_Estimates.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nasa.gov&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;files&#x2F;NASA_FY_2016_...</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbo.gov&#x2F;topics&#x2F;budget" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbo.gov&#x2F;topics&#x2F;budget</a>

&gt; if not, was it worth the risk?yes

Tax dollars, yes but not as any kind of subsidy.

Note that NASA encourages its contractors to use their stuff for private missions as well—building more of the things reduces unit price (by amortising development cost) and thus costs for NASA, so it could be that this results in lower overall cost to US taxpayers. In addition it helps collect more data on safety etc, which is in NASA&#x27;s interest, too.

&gt; The next person to take a picture of the Earth from moon may not be on a government funded mission.Note that the press release says:Most importantly, we would like to thank NASA, without whom this would not be possible. NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which provided most of the funding for Dragon 2 development, is a key enabler for this mission.Your tax dollars, if you are American, helped pay for this. Thank you and congratulations - if it works out; if not, was it worth the risk?EDIT: In response to many below, remember that the U.S. military isn&#x27;t the only alternative use of the money. Taxpayers could keep it, or it could go to other programs such as education and health. (Personally, I&#x27;d happily pay more taxes for more space exploration, education, health, and military necessary for security.)

Yes, that is exactly right.  They are not going to land, for exactly the reasons you say.

Right. SpaceX doesn&#x27;t have a craft capable of lunar orbit rendezvous<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lunar_orbit_rendezvous" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lunar_orbit_rendezvous</a>so they would need to return to the Earth directly from the surface of the moon<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Direct_ascent" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Direct_ascent</a>Direct ascent requires a much larger initial launch mass, i.e., a larger rocket than has ever been built. Since it took the massive Saturn V to complete the Apollo missions using lunar rendezvous, and SpaceX&#x27;s Falcon Heavy is smaller, I don&#x27;t think they are even close to having the ability to land on the moon and return.(And that&#x27;s assuming there&#x27;s not other insurmountable factors preventing Dragon from landing on the moon and taking off, which there probably are.)Hopefully someone with more knowledge can chime in.

Between flying to the moon and back (no landing) the only difference is fuel and consumables (air&#x2F;food). The key capabilities are launch, landing, spacecraft communication and operations, and navigational support for computing and executing maneuvers to get into (and out of) a trans-lunar orbit. The more fuel you have the easier it is on the equipment.Or to put it differently, the difference is that when you get to the Moon you make an orbital injection burn in order to slow yourself down to the point that you can stay in lunar orbit, and then when your done you make another burn to put you back into the trans-lunar orbit.When you get back you can either do a high speed re-entry or you can do an Earth orbit injection burn.You still need a vehicle that can carry people for the duration of the trip. You need to get it into a translunar orbit so that you can get out to the Moon. You need to be able to precisely locate yourself in space relative to the Earth-Moon system and course correct to achieve your orbit goals. All of that stuff has to happen either way.There is an excellent discussion of the various orbit options for getting to the moon in this paper: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.esa.int&#x2F;esapub&#x2F;bulletin&#x2F;bullet103&#x2F;biesbroek103.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.esa.int&#x2F;esapub&#x2F;bulletin&#x2F;bullet103&#x2F;biesbroek103.pd...</a> definitely worth looking over to get a better appreciation on what is involved.

It&#x27;s not a greater achievement than the Apollo moon landings (it&#x27;s basically the mission flown on Apollo 13, swinging around the moon without going into orbit and then coming back), but it&#x27;s still something that hasn&#x27;t been done since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Well, it says in the article:&quot;Once operational Crew Dragon missions are underway for NASA, SpaceX will launch the private mission on a journey to circumnavigate the moon and return to Earth.&quot;I don&#x27;t know why people are arguing over whether they are landing or not...

&gt; China has been working up to getting a space capability to send people to the Moon with the full backing of the government funding, by 2035[1]. They started in 2003. SpaceX was founded in 2002 and they are saying they will fly someone around the moon next year?I don&#x27;t want to downplay SpaceX at all because I&#x27;m a huge fan, but isn&#x27;t flying someone to the moon (and presumably back) more complicated than just flying around the moon and back? As I understand, apart from the challenge of achieving orbital velocity (no small feat), flying around the moon might require ~41% more velocity (assuming escape velocity to orbital velocity being a ratio of something like sqrt(2):1) and you can use the moon&#x27;s gravity to redirect you back to earth, whereas landing on the moon and returning requires even more energy (slowing down to land + escaping the moon and returning), not to mention the various other technical requirements involved with the landing itself.&quot;Beyond the moon&quot; makes this sound like it&#x27;ll be a greater achievement than the Apollo moon landings, but I&#x27;m not sure that&#x27;s really true. Don&#x27;t get me wrong, the fact that it&#x27;s a private (ish) company doing this is incredible, just not quite &quot;moon landing&quot; incredible... yet.

Nasty flu this time of year, or so I&#x27;ve heard.

I certainly hope they allow permission for any emergency landings required at Clavius...could create a bit of a diplomatic row if not.

I think you have to do a lot of squinting to see things this way. The vast majority of the funding for SpaceX has come from a government.

The necessary implication of individuals with power enough to rival governments is that, well, they can rival governments.Do you think this is a bad thing? Personally I quite like the idea of having enough wealth &#x2F; power to rival a nation-state, since I trust the average nation-state exactly as far as I can throw it.

&gt;&gt; For so long it was only countries that could do something like that, now it is nearly within reach of individuals.And that is something we all need to think long and hard about. Sure, spaceflight is cheaper these days, but we also live in an age of extraordinarily concentrated wealth. The necessary implication of individuals with power enough to rival governments is that, well, they can rival governments.Anyone else see that giant superyacht in london? The one that used HMS Belfast as a dock. Some really do have toys to rival governments.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thesun.co.uk&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;nintchdbpict000264521121.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thesun.co.uk&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;nintchdb...</a>

But practically speaking there&#x27;s also not much the US can do in that scenario if Russia or China ignores US sovereignty over Mars and sets up their own base. The US&#x27;s only recourse would be to start a war, and would that be worth it? Sovereignty is more of a practical concept than a legal one: you own what you are both able and willing to defend.See also the Russian bases in the Australian Antarctic territory. Australia asserts sovereignty over a third of Antarctica, Russia ignores it and sets up bases anyway. Australia has neither the ability nor the desire to fight Russia, so we studiously ignore it.

The Outer Space Treaty was only meant to prevent governments from claiming ownership of celestial bodies. The SPACE Act echoes that:&gt;It is the sense of Congress that by the enactment of this Act, the United States does not thereby assert sovereignty or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any celestial body

&gt; there isn&#x27;t anything about a privately funded and established outpost that wants to declare independencePractically speaking, there isn&#x27;t anything the UN can do if America sticks a base on Mars and calls it sovereign soil. We&#x27;ve already started legalising private ownership of celestial bodies through the SPACE Act, in direct contravention of the Outer Space Treaty.

I&#x27;m not sure I understand what you&#x27;re trying to say.China was the beneficiary of decades of Soviet research into space as well, their early program flew Soyuz craft, their current craft maintain backwards compatibility if what is available is to be believed. They have a space station and put a rover on the Moon. So how is that an unfair comparison?And how does using existing research take away from anything SpaceX has done? Sure NASA bought missions from them before they were sure that they could deliver, that sort of seed funding is not uncommon. Blue Origin benefited from a wealth of data in the DC-X project, also funded by NASA but its still remarkable what that they took Newshepard up and down from space four times.I disagree that the Chinese started from scratch. From where I am sitting they started at the exact same place SpaceX did, using the research and know-how from a well funded and storied space organization to bootstrap their goals.

But let&#x27;s have some perspective, please. NASA was the beneficiary of years of research in engineering and basic science by the German government. They didn&#x27;t make anything as a result of their own original effort.So what? Nobody reinvents the wheel if they don&#x27;t have to.And I don&#x27;t know why you think China started behind SpaceX. China benefited from US technical assistance in a way that SpaceX didn&#x27;t.

This is great, but let&#x27;s have some perspective, please. SpaceX is the beneficiary of decades of research in engineering and basic science by the US government. They aren&#x27;t making this achievement as a result of their own original effort or even funding (NASA provided a significant portion of the funding).I don&#x27;t think it is fair to compare the SpaceX plan with China&#x27;s (who have almost certainly had to acquire the expertise from a starting position far, far behind where SpaceX started).

&gt;Dragon has the deltaV to land on the moon (not sure if it has enough to get off again though) and SpaceX certainly has the expertise in building spacecraft that land.Not if you count de-orbiting as part of landing it doesn&#x27;t. It has something like 300m&#x2F;s dV. Landing would take 2000ish, and that just gets you down.

An analyst downgrades Tesla, and shares lost ~5% of their value == Tesla burning up money? A delay in production? That&#x27;s your argument? All of these articles are complete, and proven bullst.

How will Elon get us to the moon if Tesla is burning up all of his money? [1]Also a private entity can&#x27;t assert jurisdiction over anything, you have to be a state to do just that.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2017-02-27&#x2F;tesla-slumps-in-premarket-trading-as-goldman-downgrades-to-sell" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2017-02-27&#x2F;tesla-slu...</a>Downvotes? Ah, i forgot that around here one is not supposed to question anything that Elon does.

&gt; All this time I imagined that some country would establish a base there, and grudgingly offer up some space for non-state use, and now there is this possibility of a private facility that states have to ask permission to visit? That is priceless.That is scary, and dangerous, more like.

&gt; Why are we not placing a DNA&#x2F;Seed-vault on the moonBecause it&#x27;s expensive to get it there, useless on the moon, and expensive to get it somewhere useful in the event of need, all because of gravity wells.&gt; Why are we not depositing resources on the moonSame answer.&gt; Why dont we plan, plant, place autonomous robotic pods on the moon that can be called down&#x2F;up carrying various resourcesAnd, again, same answer, both for the pods and the resources themselves.&gt; what happens to the moon if we transfer water&#x2F;create water on the moonIt boils off and leaves, possibly after freezing for a while, depending on the time of lunar day you deposit the water, IIRC.&gt; Why cant this be a global effortBecause a really bad idea doesn&#x27;t get better because more people are involved.&gt; Why aren&#x27;t we actually practicing mars colonization on the moon first?Because the Moon isn&#x27;t very much like Mars in ways relevant to colonization, so there is no value to doing that. While perhaps some relevant technologies might benefit from the shorter feedback cycles of Earth-Moon missions for refinement, the costs of such missions are close enough to Earth-Mars missions that it&#x27;s generally not worth it to go to the Moon if your goal is Mars. Just go to Mars.

To the DNA&#x2F;Seed Vault question, I heard a really interesting point of view expressed which resonated with me. It was this, &quot;Why not create a mechanism to record all of our knowledge and information so that if an extinction level event occurs we can come back from the brink?&quot; And the answer was &quot;If we allow ourselves to become nearly extinct, especially through our own action or inaction, isn&#x27;t is more reasonable to let what ever comes after us to have a fresh start?&quot;Can you imagine if all of a sudden, out of the ground a bunch of Dinosaur scientists emerged having kept themselves in cryo-suspension with all of their dinosaur tech to reestablish themselves as the dominant species on the planet? Are they going to be conflicted? Do they just eradicate humans because they were first? I&#x27;m sure Charlie Stross could make up a good story along those lines. I&#x27;d read it for sure :-)But the meta question, the big one behind all those &quot;Why&quot;s up there, is well understood. As a planet, and certainly as a nation, and even on as small a scale as a city, we are divided in our understanding of the reasoning for why being a multiplanet species might be more important than say, feeding the starving in Sudan.You can have a room of 100,000 people shouting in unison to colonize Mars and that is an insignificant fraction of the people who would have to be aligned to make that the generally agreed upon plan.And that is one of the things that makes this announcement so amazing to me. When we achieve that moment where a small enough group of individuals can effect a legitimate colonization effort, then it can happen without consensus of a nation-state and can proceed based on the self interest of a much smaller group. And while it is a staple in science fiction that corporations have fleets of space craft they use to achieve their interplanetary goals like an inter-solar Dutch East India company, I never expected it to be possible for a company to be able to do that in my lifetime.

I&#x27;ve always held the following questions about space, and moon - in-specific - exploration:* Why are we not placing a DNA&#x2F;Seed-vault on the moon* Why are we not depositing resources on the moon* Why dont we plan, plant, place autonomous robotic pods on the moon that can be called down&#x2F;up carrying various resources* what happens to the moon if we transfer water&#x2F;create water on the moon* Why cant this be a global effort, in the sense that we are talking about colonizing&#x2F;visiting mars, but we can&#x27;t even colonize the moon? What&#x2F;Who is blocking this effort?* Why aren&#x27;t we actually practicing mars colonization on the moon first???---There are so many questions that I have about moon colonization&#x2F;exploration that are so flippantly replied to as cost...It feeds my tinfoil: there are things on the moon they dont want us to see??? (I know, just as flippant - but c&#x27;mon humanity, get your shit together and put some known colonies on the freaking moon!)

Wow. This sends so many thoughts cascading through my head that I&#x27;m dizzy.Some things to consider, China has been working up to getting a space capability to send people to the Moon with the full backing of the government funding, by 2035[1]. They started in 2003. SpaceX was founded in 2002 and they are saying they will fly someone around the moon next year? Dragon has the deltaV to land on the moon (not sure if it has enough to get off again though) and SpaceX certainly has the expertise in building spacecraft that land.The next person to take a picture of the Earth from moon may not be on a government funded mission. That one really blows my mind. For so long it was only countries that could do something like that, now it is nearly within reach of individuals.The UN has treaties about claiming (or not) the moon by a nation state, but there isn&#x27;t anything about a privately funded and established outpost that wants to declare independence. All this time I imagined that some country would establish a base there, and grudgingly offer up some space for non-state use, and now there is this possibility of a private facility that states have to ask permission to visit? That is priceless.[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.wsj.com&#x2F;chinarealtime&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;29&#x2F;man-on-the-moon-china-sets-lunar-mission-date&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.wsj.com&#x2F;chinarealtime&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;29&#x2F;man-on-the-moo...</a>

A lot of innovation was initially funded by the government especially in Silicon Valley. That said, Spacex is still legally a private company.Many a time, when companies engage in capital intensive business endeavours they need someone to provide some incentive or even build the initial technology. NASA does this here much like DARPA did with the Internet&#x27;s initial infrastructure.

It&#x27;s not stretching the definition at all.You can hardly be a large business in any developed nation without having substantial business relationships with various world governments.See: Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Boeing, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, Ford, GM, 3M, Berkshire Hathaway, General Electric, etc.Might as well pretend Medtronic, Pfizer or Johnson &amp; Johnson aren&#x27;t private, because they do so much business with government healthcare systems.

That&#x27;s really stretching the definition of private company considering NASA is the major provider of both funding and infrastructure.

I wonder what kind of training they&#x27;ll be required to go through. A majority of NASA astronauts have had military training. How can you guarantee that an eccentric billionaire won&#x27;t lose his cool once he&#x27;s orbiting a heavenly body?

I wonder who the people going on this trip are. Are they billionaires, a rich couple planning a honeymoon. You&#x27;d have to be rich to do this right? I also wonder which kind of insurance both Spacex and the individuals have for this.It&#x27;s amazing that private companies are now doing things that were previously only one by governments and nations.I don&#x27;t know how this will work out but congratulations to Musk, Spacex and NASA.

But flying close to the sun is still really bad. It&#x27;s just we&#x27;ve never got close enough to the sun for it to be a problem.

It may seem less weird as trips to the moon become more common. We still use &quot;flew too close to the sun&quot; even though human powered flight at high altitudes is now common. It&#x27;s more about the story of the original moonshot.

I love that a moon mission is a milestone en route to SpaceX&#x27; moonshot, not the moonshot itself. We need new idioms for these people.

Next year seems extremely ambitious. Wouldn&#x27;t humans next year, mean non-crewed test flight this year?

$40-$160M? I didn&#x27;t realize just how far the price had fallen for a literal moonshot... Thanks!

Definitely rail, which is something like a zillion dollars per mile. The moon trip is only $40-160M.

Which would be more expensive: a personal SpaceX flight to the Moon, or personally funding a high-speed rail line from Seattle to Vancouver?

I&#x27;m sure they only sell you a ticket if you pulled yourself up out of the slums by your own bootstraps. No old money allowed.

&gt;Except that these two private citizens are presumably absurdly wealthy. Whereas the nationalize space program which brought forth the Apollo mission gave all private citizens, as well as schoolchildren for generations, hope and aspirational outlooks.I doubt it&#x27;s any more difficult to get absurdly wealthy than to become an astronaut.

Sure, but right now no country actually has a deep-space human mission program. So SpaceX doing what they do is actually pretty exciting for everyone - especially that the express intent of Elon is to significantly drop down the costs of getting to space. If they can succeed in that then who knows, maybe our children will have an actual chance of leaving this planet, even if for a short while.

The first cars were only accessible to the &quot;absurdly wealthy&quot;. So was air travel. Most things when you think about them, in fact. That doesn&#x27;t mean the rest of us didn&#x27;t aspire to have them and eventually have access to them thanks to all that early adopter funded R&amp;D.

&gt; ... two private citizens ... have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission. Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind ...Except that these two private citizens are presumably absurdly wealthy. Whereas the nationalize space program which brought forth the Apollo mission gave all private citizens, as well as schoolchildren for generations, hope and aspirational outlooks.Whereas the current national situation in the US, with respect to primary-school education and government-supported science is quite dire. So things are not at all hopeful right now, and many of us suffer nightmares of violence and deportation.So, there&#x27;s that.

You didn&#x27;t believe the Chinese when they said they would be there by 2035? :)

They had failures, but they&#x27;re going forward. They launched again recently, and nailed the landing, again.That said, I suppose we need to apply Elon Time coefficient here, and the Moon mission will end up being in 2019 &#x2F; 2020. Still, I&#x27;m very excited, because for the first time in my life, the possibility of humans going to the Moon again within my lifetime feels actually real.

I&#x27;m the biggest fan of Elon there is, I&#x27;m pretty sure, but this still makes me nervous.The timescale is bullshit-- the past two failures have both pushed things back a ways, and at this point I&#x27;m not optimistic there won&#x27;t be more failures soon (although I strongly believe they&#x27;ll succeed completely in the long term regardless). Things would have to go perfectly for this timescale to actually happen.But what really makes me nervous is the thought of it going wrong and people dying. That would be pretty terrible. I feel like they need to do a lot more testing before they can send anyone around the moon in a mere 18-20months. That&#x27;s just too soon. F9 is still having confusing failures after years in service. Falcon Heavy hasn&#x27;t even flown once yet, nor Dragon 2.

&quot;We&#x27;ll do amazing things tomorrow!&quot; and &quot;We&#x27;ll do amazing things the day after tomorrow!&quot; are still amazing things; Musk timelines just come pre-Hofstadter&#x27;d.

I&#x27;m glad to see somebody questioning the timescale. There is definitely a huge blind spot around Musk around here.

I find this schedule very very unlikely. No humans have flown in the Dragon at all yet. 
Also none on any of SpaceX:s rockets. There have been lots of launch and pad failures.I&#x27;m cheering for SpaceX for doing more towards spacefaring, but I&#x27;m very skeptical and think this will, at least, end up being negative PR to them, and, at worst, a lot more.

About 20 years ago as a young engineer I was given the opportunity to propose some solutions to NASA, and was invited to the Kennedy Space Center’s LCC for the presentation. Prior to meeting with the exec team at the LCC they took me on a tour of the VAB, where I saw all the operations and was allowed to take digital images of some of the vehicle assembly and maintenance operations to demonstrate possible improvements. Such great energy at the whole KSC. What an honor to be there to feel that passion and gratitude!Last month I was again at the KSC and LCC as a tourist, and the energy was just a minute fraction of what I&#x27;d seen 20 years before. We need this kind of vision [from SpaceX and others, e.g., like this other NASA-based article today with the young engineer comments, who did the hydroponics in microgravity at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13743196" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13743196</a> ] to push science and technology beyond the video game and entertainment markets. Congratulations to SpaceX, the microgravity hydroponics engineer, and the others with vision who are once-again elevating the bright eyes of brilliant youth, scientists and engineers.

So when will they launch a Falcon Heavy with a Dragon, unmanned? They&#x27;ve got to try that first.  Will the initial Falcon Heavy test flight carry a Dragon spacecraft?

Count on SpaceX to renew faith in humanity. ^_^

can you provide the exact quote from the article that indicates that musk does not know the two passengers? i read through the article twice and cannot seem to find it. perhaps the publication removed a sentence?

5) According to another source, he did not say that he knew any of them, but rather that the two passengers knew each other.Source: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spaceflightnow.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;27&#x2F;spacex-to-send-two-private-citizens-around-the-moon-and-back&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spaceflightnow.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;27&#x2F;spacex-to-send-two-priv...</a>

In this photo from 2012, he&#x27;s inside the Shuttle White Room at the end of the Swing Arm on Pad 39A: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flic.kr&#x2F;p&#x2F;bzh1Ju" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flic.kr&#x2F;p&#x2F;bzh1Ju</a>

It is very likely Steve Jurveston.1. In a comment about the announcement alluded to it as a &quot;recurring dream&quot;[1]2. 5 years ago, described a moon orbit as &quot;when I plan to fly in space. I have two specific missions in mind&quot;[2]3. SpaceX Board Member and investor4. Has the money5. Knows Elon &quot;Mr Musk declined to reveal their identities, only saying that they knew each other&quot;[3]6. Is &quot;nobody from Hollywood&quot;7. Liked this comment on his FB wall &quot;Can I tag along?!? Ahhhhh!!!&quot;[4][1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flickr.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;jurvetson&#x2F;23226164619" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flickr.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;jurvetson&#x2F;23226164619</a>[2]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flickr.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;jurvetson&#x2F;7659357718" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flickr.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;jurvetson&#x2F;7659357718</a>[3]<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;science-environment-39111030" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;science-environment-39111030</a>[4]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;jurvetson&#x2F;posts&#x2F;10158310863860611?comment_id=10158311172520611&amp;include_parent=false" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;jurvetson&#x2F;posts&#x2F;10158310863860611?c...</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kerbalspaceprogram.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kerbalspaceprogram.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m more interested in knowing how google plans to insure both Larry and Sergey while they&#x27;re engaging on such a dangerous mission.

I want to know what the insurance company of the private citizens says to this.

&gt; This presents an opportunity for humans to return to deep space for the first time in 45 years and they will travel faster and further into the Solar System than any before them.Shocking that it&#x27;s been this long. There is an entire generation that hasn&#x27;t seen man make it into deep space.

Do you see the comments on one site: &quot;about 2 rich fat cats all ego-ed out who paid Space X tens of millions, just smiling from ear to ear and gloating that the whole world is watching them make history, and the rest of us &quot;lowlanders&quot; have to watch them with envy - - only to have it by mere chance turn into a Roman spectacle - - - - of the whole world watching as they get bar-be-qued in space, never to see earth again.A massive crowd will be assembled to attempt a Guinness book of world records, to moon the stars with bare asses all in unison in a soccer stadium just as they blast off into space, yelling out like the Romans did at the coliseum: &quot;We salute you those who are about to DIE !&quot; then post it on YouTube !

No one would be happier than me if they pull this off. However, I think the timeline is super ambitious. They never had to deal with human passengers till now, meaning they have to develop all that skill set in 1.5 years. Even with significant help from NASA&#x2F;Russia this sounds like an extremely tall order to me.

not landingthat&#x27;s cool, but kerbal-easy

&quot;Next Year&quot; in Musk time; that&#x27;s about 2022.

the should send mining robots to build a base unmanned first.

Wasn&#x27;t being able to support and protect the crew beyond LEO the &quot;killer feature&quot; of the Orion?If you can do it with a Dragon, what niche is Orion left with?

So basically it&#x27;s the government using private institutions for space too now. 
Welcome! (Sarcastic)

well, all you have to do now is get all that water and carbon to the moon, I guess.

So it seems the big challenge with landing and taking off from the moon is carrying that much fuel. A robotic module on the moon that converts water, carbon and sunlight to rocket fuel should solve that problem.Is anyone else imagining the mission is going to discretely drop such a module when it&#x27;s in the moon&#x27;s shadow or do I just have an overactive imagination?

I think that, as Elon pointed out, it can really be an interesting source of income to deploy entirely on the &quot;Mars Project&quot;.I really root for &#x27;em even though I know that China has started working on a similar business-model-trip back in &#x27;03 and they still haven&#x27;t made any public announcement or published a precise launch year...

so much opportunity for celebration and at the same so much opportunity to destroy the company. hope they do a few dry runs that we get to watch because while this could be a publicity event of incredible benefit it can just as easily backfire

Well in a way these are fantastic news. But on the other side they are totally reckless news.What if the Sun has a SEP event during that period? Everyone on board will die in the period from hours to days from exposure to radiation.We presently have absolutely no knowledge on how to predict that this will happen or to protect a ship in case it happens.The Moon missions where done before we knew of the existence of SEPs and fortunately we were lucky... but we are not supposed to just rely on luck now that we know they exist.

SpaceX to Send Privately Crewed Dragon Spacecraft Beyond the Moon Next Year