SpaceX to send private paying customers around the moon

[Walms]

http://www.spacex.com/news/2017/02/27/spacex-send-privately-crewed-dragon-spacecraft-beyond-moon-next-year

 

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We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year

 

Private space travel is a thing!

 

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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. Lift-off will be from Kennedy Space Center’s historic Pad 39A near Cape Canaveral – the same launch pad used by the Apollo program for its lunar missions. 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.

 

[jeffmeyer5295]

That's actually incredible, lets hope it works out. SpaceX is doing awesome things.

[Orangeator]

In before the "unexpected delays".

[Bananasplit_00]

thats cool, hope this becomes a thing tbh

[DocSwag]

I hope that in my lifetime space travel will be akin to plane travel and that we'll have colonized a bunch of planets in our solar system and begun exploration of other solar systems.

[Nikesta]

I'd just like to say Hello Twitch and linus! I can assure you linus will pick this for the friday wan show

[2FA]

I'm not sure how many of you realize this but if they make this schedule, they will have beaten NASA in the race to get back into manned deep space flights. Honestly SLS and Orion, while fundamentally good ideas, are horribly behind schedule and over budget. 

[iRileyx]

Literally read this, switched to Facebook and the first post I saw was from Sky News with this article. 

 

Do Facebook spy on our website viewing? #conspiracy. 

 

Jokes aside, I wouldn't mind a ticket for that. 

[Walms]

13 minutes ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

I'm not sure how many of you realize this but if they make this schedule, they will have beaten NASA in the race to get back into manned deep space flights. Honestly SLS and Orion, while fundamentally good ideas, are horribly behind schedule and over budget. 

Yeah SpaceX is free of the political drivers that NASA has to deal with. One of the things that has really hurt them is the number of steak holders they have to satisfy. That's why the space shuttles were so expensive, they were just built to do too many jobs. 

http://fusion.net/story/262294/space-shuttle-failure/

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As the Investigative Board noted, the shuttle “aimed to be all things to all people.” This included serving as a showcase for America’s technological dominance (but on a tight and constantly changing budget). This also included the unstated mission of keeping NASA in business after the end of the Apollo program. There were too many compromises and too many conflicting agendas: cut corners but keep giving America amazing spacewalk visuals. The space shuttle, having failed at reducing launch costs, became an end in itself.

Also Orion is much more challenging than the dragon. Dragon is within similar specs to the original Apollo casuals, NASA did a lot of the work to prove they were safe. But Orion has to come in a lot faster and is much bigger so NASA has to do all the ground work to prove the design. In the Apollo era safety was a concern but they were a bit more cowboy back then

 

[Aytex]

14 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

I hope that in my lifetime space travel will be akin to plane travel and that we'll have colonized a bunch of planets in our solar system and begun exploration of other solar systems.

I wish for that too. But human nature will take over and we will destroy ourselves if we ever wanted to achieve something like that  

Money and greed kills us.

 

:feelsbadman:

[DocSwag]

Just now, Aytex said:

I wish for that too. But human nature will take over and we will destroy ourselves if we ever wanted to achieve something like that  

Money and greed kills us.

While that is true for a lot I think collectively human nature is good. The only thing I can imagine that might stop us is a nuclear war but hopefully it never comes to that. I think one thing we will have to figure out though is a permanent government. All the governments we've seen so far end up getting destroyed through revolution a few hundred years after their creation; honestly I think the U.S. is going downwards too. Sigh, so many politics. Maybe aliens can come and help us out?  

[Aytex]

Just now, DocSwag said:

While that is true for a lot I think collectively human nature is good. The only thing I can imagine that might stop us is a nuclear war but hopefully it never comes to that. I think one thing we will have to figure out though is a permanent government. All the governments we've seen so far end up getting destroyed through revolution a few hundred years after their creation; honestly I think the U.S. is going downwards too. Sigh, so many politics. Maybe aliens can come and help us out?  

Saw a video on how much we spend on war, as a world. If we put all that money towards space exploration and science and tech advancements, we would be thriving faster than now.

 

Unless we get hit by aliens, I doubt the world will come together.

[2FA]

1 minute ago, Walms said:

Also Orion is much more challenging than the dragon. Dragon is within similar specs to the original Apollo casuals, NASA did a lot of the work to prove they were safe. But Orion has to come in a lot faster and is much bigger so NASA has to do all the ground work to prove the design. In the Apollo era safety was a concern but they were a bit more cowboy back the

They consider safety a lot more now then they did back then. I mean what it took NASA one year to redesign the capsule and launch another manned attempt after the failure of Apollo 1.

[DocSwag]

1 minute ago, Aytex said:

Saw a video on how much we spend on war, as a world. If we put all that money towards space exploration and science and tech advancements, we would be thriving faster than now.

 

Unless we get hit by aliens, I doubt the world will come together.

And we also really need to put more money into science in general. The amount of money NASA gets compared to certain other things (military especially but there are others too) is actually horrible, we really need to invest more in science. Science is the future and unless we invest in it everything is gonna suck.

[Aytex]

Just now, DocSwag said:

And we also really need to put more money into science in general. The amount of money NASA gets compared to certain other things (military especially but there are others too) is actually horrible, we really need to invest more in science. Science is the future and unless we invest in it everything is gonna suck.

Rip earth my friend.  

[DocSwag]

1 minute ago, Aytex said:

Rip earth my friend.  

I hope Trump doesn't f*ck up all the global warming efforts we've made because global warming is real and we need to stop it. It's kinda sad that people can't accept it's real even though the evidence is in their faces and then when you show them it they're like, "But my winter was pretty cold definitely no global warming." And then I'm just like, "THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS!!!"

[pipnina]

4 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

And we also really need to put more money into science in general. The amount of money NASA gets compared to certain other things (military especially but there are others too) is actually horrible, we really need to invest more in science. Science is the future and unless we invest in it everything is gonna suck.

"I'm tried of sayin' this but I have to say it again. The NASA budget is 4/10ths of one penny on the tax dollar. If I cut, horizontally, into the tax dollar 4/10ths of 1%, that doesn't even get you into the INK. So I will not accept a statement that says we can't AFFORD IT!" -Neil deGrasse Tyson 

[DocSwag]

Just now, pipnina said:

"I'm tried of sayin' this but I have to say it again. The NASA budget is 4/10ths of one penny on the tax dollar. If I cut, horizontally, into the tax dollar 4/10ths of 1%, that doesn't even get you into the INK. So I will not accept a statement that says, we cannot AFFORD IT!" -Neil deGrasse Tyson 

Our military spending is way too much too. Maybe if we didn't spend so much on the military we wouldn't be swimming on a $20,000,000,000,000 debt right now.

[Cela1]

I hope the dates stick for once, it will be a big achievement if they do, the FH and Dragon 2 have been delayed enough. Also wondering and envying who the two passengers are.

[Tieox]

I really hope they pull this off.  Give our species something to be proud of for once. 

[CostcoSamples]

This is awesome!!!  Go SpaceX !!!  There's a company that I can feel going being a fanboy for (for now).

[2FA]

4 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Our military spending is way too much too. Maybe if we didn't spend so much on the military we wouldn't be swimming on a $20,000,000,000,000 debt right now.

Not even counting spending, we have as much military equipment as at least the next five biggest militaries combined.

[Godlygamer23]

8 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

I hope Trump doesn't f*ck up all the global warming efforts we've made because global warming is real and we need to stop it. It's kinda sad that people can't accept it's real even though the evidence is in their faces and then when you show them it they're like, "But my winter was pretty cold definitely no global warming." And then I'm just like, "THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS!!!"

I deal with this at my workplace. "Oh it's just a hoax." No it isn't. Global warming and climate change are both real, and what they didn't understand is that climate change includes global warming.

[grimreeper132]

13 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

And we also really need to put more money into science in general. The amount of money NASA gets compared to certain other things (military especially but there are others too) is actually horrible, we really need to invest more in science. Science is the future and unless we invest in it everything is gonna suck.

to be fair, it depends where in the military you invest, as the R&D part of the military, does occasionally discover shit that help us in out day to day lives

[DocSwag]

Just now, grimreeper132 said:

to be fair, it depends where in the military you invest, as the R&D part of the military, does occasionally discover shit that help us in out day to day lives

Yeah, but it'd be much better to be investing money in how to get a person to Mars than how to create a laser beam that can destroy a plane.