Japanese Billionaire Recruiting 8 Crew Members for 2023 Trip Around the Moon
Eight crew members wanted! Join Yusaku Maezawa on the journey to the Moon!
▼dearMoon official website https://dearmoon.earth/ “dearMoon” – the first civilian lunar orbital mission – is planned to lift off in 2023.
Two years after the press conference that drew international attention, MZ has a big update to share. The video also contains a special message from SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk.
53 responses to “Japanese Billionaire Recruiting 8 Crew Members for 2023 Trip Around the Moon”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Translation: Artists, as a class, are physical cowards and I rolled snake-eyes on finding any who wanted to come along. Therefore, all applications are now being accepted from anyone. Talk to me.
We also have a “Not Later Than” date for this mission to be launched – Dec. 31, 2023.
Fun times.
8 crew members I take to imply no Dragon 2. If this flight goes before New Years Eve 2023 it will be on Falcon and Dragon hardware. Starship won’t be ready to go to the Moon yet.
That would require at least two Falcon Heavy launches if he uses Dragon 2, maybe $300 million or so.
Dear Moon is not going to involve Falcon Heavy and/or Crew Dragon 2.
Yes, it’s always been the Starship, but the Falcon Heavy/Dragon is affordable as an option if Starship doesn’t work out.
But of course if the public realizes that the Falcon Heavy/Dragon is able to do the same mission as the SLS/Orion for 1/20 the cost, and do it now, it will make many pork maximizing Congress Critters very unhappy.
“if the public realizes that the Falcon Heavy/Dragon is able to do the same mission as the SLS/Orion for 1/20 the cost, and do it now,”
The problem with that is that they aren’t able to do it now. They probably could do it in the future with the necessary development cost still coming in far cheaper than SLS/Orion, but at the moment, neither is ready for a crewed cislunar flight.
Neither is Starship, but Falcon Heavy and Dragon are much much further along the development process for cis Lunar flights.
The difference between them is that someone is paying to have Starship developed to that capability, and the development work is in progress. No one is funding development of a cislunar capable Crew Dragon / Falcon Heavy combo. SpaceX isn’t developing it. Unless they do, it won’t be available as an option, and it’s not something that can be done at the 11th hour. It’s significant, time and money consuming work.
Given that the Falcon 9 that the Falcon Heavy is based on is crew rated it should be fairly straight forward to crew rate the Falcon Heavy. It;s characteristics are better known than the SLS. As for lunar navigation, the Apollo Capsules didn’t have GPS, just a simple interial navigation system backed up by the astronuat’s eyeballs as in Apollo 13 and tracking from Earth. Should be easy enough to equip the Dragon 2 with an updated version. It’s life support is good for 10 days in free flight, plenty of time for a simple around the Moon mission. The Appllo 8 mission was only 6 days long and it made 10 orbits around the Moon. We are talking about a free return mission here, no orbits, which makes navigation easier.
Given how SpaceX works, and the state of their technology, they could probably do a uncrew test flight beore Artemis I and a crew flight shortly afterward IF anyone was willing to pay for it.
But yes, the commercial customers and Elon Musk are interested in the Starship not some outdated Apollo era capsule and NASA doesn’t dare fund anything, even a study, on other human lunar systems than the SLS/Orion as the Congressional Pork Critters would have a fit.
“Given that the Falcon 9 that the Falcon Heavy is based on is crew rated it should be fairly straight forward to crew rate the Falcon Heavy”
Straightforward or not, according to Elon Musk, SpaceX is unwilling to devote the time and resources to doing so, and is instead devoting the time and resources to developing and crew rating Starship/Superheavy.
“As for lunar navigation, the Apollo Capsules didn’t have GPS”
Of course they didn’t, GPS didn’t exist yet.
That doesn’t change the fact that Crew Dragon’s navigation system is based on GPS and would not function correctly at orbits above those of the GPS constellation. That doesn’t mean a different navigation system can’t be developed for it, but the reality is SpaceX has made a decision that Crew Dragon is not their path forward to take crews beyond LEO, Starship is, and thus they are developing it.
“IF anyone was willing to pay for it.”
There’s the rub. If someone is willing to pay for it.
They’ve already got a someone who was willing to pay for it, and then they convinced that someone that it would be better to pay for developing Starship instead. Right now, they have no one shaking a big wad of cash at them to crew rate Falcon Heavy and make a cislunar capable version of Crew Dragon. Chances are, based on how they’ve dealt with Maezawa if someone new came up with that big handful of cash, Musk would try to talk them into spending it on the Starship route, as well.
it would not be that hard to do a lunar fly around in a Dragon if there was also a Falcon9H launch for the propulsion stage. the GPS thing is a none issue
Yeah, we’ll see what happens when money and human will goes up against cold hard facts of flight readiness.
I’m thinking just that as an insurance policy against Starship not being ready.
A major part of the Dear Moon mission is that it is funding Starship development. How does spending money to crew rate Falcon Heavy and make cis-lunar capable upgrades to Crew Dragon insure that?
NASA requires crew ratings. SpaceX and its fans don’t. Many of them think the process silly.
No FAA approval, no launch, regardless of how many fans there.
Why if the Falcon Heavy is crew rated and the Dragon 2 updated? Would Congress or NASA really be able block it? And who said anything about NASA astronauts being on the flight or NASA even being involved in it.
What does congress have to do with it? FAA approval is needed for commercial spaceflight. They aren’t going to approve human spaceflight in vehicles that aren’t crew rated – whether the rating was done by the FAA or they accept NASA’s vehicle certification.
Which is why they would do an uncrew flight first, to get the data for FAA Approval. As for NASA, it only figures in if NASA flies an astronaut on it.
See what I mean.
SpaceX is not going to risk humans without doing the steps needed to make sure it is safe and will get FAA approval. They aren’t Boeing gaming the system to make more money on Wall Street.
Have we seen that process for COMSTAC’s licensing crewed flights on SS2 and N Shepard? From when I was part of the community the FAA was hyper focused on protecting 3rd parties. I did not see a lot of process to protect the payloads. Then again, the payloads I was looking to launch were not human.
All FAA currently has authority to do is see to the safety of the uninvolved public. The safety of those involved in human spaceflight is up to the providers and the participants.
I think a lot of the cis Lunar capability of Falcon Heavy and Dragon are already built in. I think the changes for a free return trip are minimal.
TLI will be done inside the GPS constellation.
Comm radio based tracking is not difficult, and many non NASA facilities capable of doing that for cruise already exist.
Dragon has a lot of radiation soak time now. So most really bad upset events can probably just be addressed by a reboot and reloading of flight state from the ground.
Reentry capabilities for Dragon are well known now. A standard double dip reentry from the Moon is probably a known if not tested option.
Falcon Heavy will have had a fair number of flights by then.
To close out all of the above (and much more) with Starship in 2 years and 10 months is highly unlikely.
Perhaps you are right, and SpaceX is going down the wrong path, but that doesn’t change the choices they’ve made.
You forget, it has the SuperDracos it could use to slow down with just before reaching the atmosphere. It would reduce the stress on the heat shield.
From 11.2 km/sec down to 11.16 km/sec something 🙂 It won’t matter much. Now if you want to protect the people and put the machines at high risk, you could do a “Black Buck” operation ala the Falklands Island conflict and have Starship tankers cascade tank each other up and keep the crewed Starship fully fueled in an extended stepwise TLI to free return. That would take some time to wait for perigee phasing. So say a fully fueled Starship has a DV of 4 km/sec with a big crew module onboard full of people, your reentry load goes from 11.2 km/sec down to 6 km/sec. That’s doable! But you’re going to probably have two tankers that will come in at full parabolic velocities. They’ll get toasty. Not to mention you’d probably have four or more left behind in lower elliptical orbits you’d have to go retank so they can return to Earth.
Dear Moon has been about Starship ever since the project was announced at the 2018 Starship update event. The plan has always been to make the flight in 2023. The eight passengers would be in addition to Maezawa who would be number nine. There also seems to be allowance for one to three SpaceX pros on board for a total manifest of 10 to 12 people.
Yeah, I realize that. If no later than New Years Eve 2023 is meant to hold, and a flight will result, by my estimation it will be a free return trajectory on something assembled in LEO and boosted to the free return trajectory with two or more Dragons on it. No way Starship is going to be ready for refueling in LEO and then ready for high return velocity reentries. Not unless they’re going to spend the better part of a week or so doing successive aero braking on return. The heat load of slamming into the atmosphere at 11.2 km/sec is much higher than doing it at 7.8 km/sec.
Time will tell what the plan is, as well as how the testing results in refining the design.
However a free return trajectory means all the fuel not needed for landing/takeoff from the lunar surface could be available for braking into orbit.
SpaceX: This is our plan – the time frame and the vehicles.
Andrew Tubbiolo: I don’t think their plan will work, so I am certain they have a secret other plan that only I have figured out.
We’ll see – in a bit less than 34 months. Or sooner.
It certainly won’t be a major catastrophe if Dear Moon doesn’t go off on the currently notional schedule, but I don’t see either refueling or re-entry as major speed bumps.
Starship is going to need TPS good enough for an Earth return from the Moon in order to go to and come back from Mars anyway. The only Starships that could skate by with TPS only good enough for re-entry from LEO would be tanker Starships. But, as they will fly the most frequently, it seems likely they’ll get the whole Mars-capable TPS too, for service longevity if for no other reason.
All of what you say makes sense. None of it means the development cycle will go fast. Keep in mind, we’re in the 3rd year of the stainless steel Starship, and none of them have intentionally lifted off the launch pad more than once, and every time they have, they’ve blown up or imploded for any number of reasons. This program is making great strides, but the basics still elude it.
But the cadence continues to build. A lot more got done in the second year of stainless steel Starship than in the first. More has gotten done in the roughly five months of the third year of stainless steel Starship than got done in the entire second year.
I don’t see geometric growth in issues solving. It seems linear to me. The flying issues, to me, seem like they are being solved at a similar rate as the production, structural, and engine issues of the first two and a half years. I think the footprint of geometric growth that we could see might be an increase in the size of the program, or a prompt increase in the flight rate. These expendable test articles are used and expended with weeks and even over a month before the next single sortie. Before we see those gaps go down and the flight rate go up we need to reuse and some sort of turn around time that only lasts about two or three weeks. Or, of course, less. There’s a long way to go even for the basics, but I don’t yet see a change in the rate of advancing of this project. To my eyes it’s going very linear.
Maezawa’s initial payments have been funding Starship development to make it possible on Starship. It’s not happening on any other vehicle.
In their current iterations, Crew Dragon and Falcon Heavy are not a viable alternative for the mission. Falcon Heavy is not crew rated, Crew Dragon lacks the life support systems, communication systems and navigation systems (its navigation system is GPS based and will not work correctly above the orbit of GPS satellites) that the mission would require.
Prior to the Dear Moon announcement, the plan had been for Maezawa to fly on Falcon Heavy and Crew Dragon, but with ITS in development the decision was made to put the development resources into it (and now to the Starship into which it has evolved) instead of developing versions of Crew Dragon and Falcon Heavy suited to the mission.
curious to see how this works out. I dont see Starship going to the Moon in under 36
months
Neither do I.
saw the replays of the test flight, nice job…they seem to have those control problems fixed
but that doesnt change my view on 36 months. to me they are going to be lucky to get to orbit and back in that time…but see
I noticed that the Baker institute came out about reconsidering SLS.. timeing is everything
A total success today or a total failure would not have changed the timeline all that much for Starship to be ready for cis Lunar flights. There’s a long list of advanced things they need to do, and 40 months is not enough to do them in. Think about it, before a Lunar flight we’re going to see extended flights of Starships in Earth orbit with large crews. Space X is not yet a human spaceflight operation.
That was a great show today. However structural integrity in all flight modes is still an issue.
The key thing is they have the money and motivation to keep working towards that goal. It will probably slip as all of Elon Musk’s time schedules do, but SpaceX is still moving faster than NASA or anyone else towards reaching the Moon and Mars.
SpaceX already has Lunar capable systems. 🙂 They’re just making a whole new class of Lunar capable systems. Yes, SpaceX is showing the kind of risk taking the government should have been doing all along. Starship is turning into a brilliant program I’m very impressed with SpaceX’s ability to dream up new flight modes and work them out for real.
We’ll see. By the current year’s end we should have a much better idea of what will be likely to take place in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Personally, I think the first extended orbital mission with a small crew could take place as soon as sometime next year. It would probably be the Dear Moon vehicle sent up for a couple of weeks, or perhaps a month, with two crew aboard.
SpaceX is a human spaceflight operation, just not yet anent Starship.
There seems to be a growing “chorus” of such documents anent SLS. The SLS tide seems to be going out.
Only time will tell on the future schedule of additional significant Starship milestones, but I think the remainder of 2021 is likely to be quite dispositive as to which of us is closer to being correct.
Noted. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Women of the starry night?
The shiny has blown up twice and the super-cluster-F supposed to take it up to LEO does not exist. This is pure fantasy and bizarro Musk worship. Laughing at the freaks here.
You are so right.
Those crazy brothers smashed their prototype on the beach, too. There’s no way they’d ever get it working within a couple of years or land government contracts with it.
https://cdn.theatlantic.com…
Ridiculous. What fools the Musk worshipers have always been. A never-ending parade of bad analogy and hype.
Pretty good analogy, actually. Both development flight programs were/are conducted next to water in thinly populated areas.
Actually, counting Mk1, SN1, SN3, SN4, SN8, SN9 and SN10, “the shiny” has blown up seven times. But Starhopper, SN5, SN6 and SN10 have also flown and landed intact or with minor damage.
It isn’t who laughs first, but last that counts.
And we had another BOOM! Circling the Moon in 2023 becomes less and less likely. But hey, I still WANT TO BELIEVE.
I’d say more likely.