SpaceX flings SES-12 satellite into orbit, but would-be lunar tourists should probably unpack SpaceX finally got the SES-12 comms satellite into orbit this morning while a trio of International Space Station (ISS) crew members returned in a trusty Soyuz capsule after 168 days in the black. Delayed from 1 June due to an unspecified issue with the second stage of the two stage Falcon 9, SpaceX reset the clocks for a …
Assuming every person who ever went into space was alive today, you could fit them all into a smallish conference room. To gather together every person who ever directly worked on getting them into space, you'd need a city. Possible several cities and if you go further down the supply chain, a small country. The supreme effort required to get a person safely into space is simply too great for it to be an option for the vast majority of humanity. We need new technologies which reduce the amount of effort required to get people and the stuff they need to survive into space.
Do you need the Falcon Heavy to swing past the Moon? I'm sure you don't have the fuel to get into lunar orbit, but is it possible to have a nice eccentric Earth orbit that goes round the Moon?
Elon Musk shouldn't name his barges after Iain M Banks ships though. He should go for Douglas Adams gags instead. As Adams, like Musk, loves deadlines. And the whooshing sound they make as they go past...
Not that I'm having a go, SpaceX has so far achieved things it promised. Just a few years late. I don't know when Dragon 2 will fly, but I'd not be surprised if they still beat Boeing. And BFR is due for 2019 I think, but I'd be amazed if that even comes close.
Short answer is yes.
Long Answer is yes, Dragon-2 has a dry mass of 6,400Kg, so adding fuel, etc you are looking at around 10,000Kg, a Falcon 9 can do about 3300Kg to the Moon. It needs a Falcon Heavy, expending the centre core.
BFS (The spaceship part of the BFR) is schedule to start Grasshopper type testing next year. Orbit? 2020-21 I think.
"Do you need the Falcon Heavy to swing past the Moon"
Tourism generally involves going somewhere and coming back alive. If you were into extreme tourism
you could do it from an F9 in a spacesuit with a rocket strapped to your back to recapture you into Earth orbit, but you would need a second F9 with a Dragon capsule to rendezvous with to have a survivable reentry.
Alternatively you could adopt the "Moon Direct" strategy developed by Robert Zubrin and actually visit the lunar surface without needing people to fly on an FH, but that is a much more complex endeavour.
Is there any launch vehicle of spacecraft that has actually launched on schedule?
IIRC the first manned launch of Soyuz was delayed well over a year, and still ended up being a failure (RIP Vladimir Komarov). Various parts of the Apollo program also slipped by years (eg the first flight of the LM was supposed to be in 1965, but didn't end up occurring until '68).
Space is hard, perhaps Musk should just be a bit quieter about when he hopes things will happen.
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