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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
by Udik 10y ago
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...
- agildehaus 10y agoNot sure how this differs from Apollo.
- amalag 10y agoApollo had manned space missions before that.
- _ph_ 10y agoSpaceX plans to do this Moon mission only after they had manned missions to the ISS.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Udik 10y agoThe cold war? A national effort? Dead crews during the project? I mean, I'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.
- nickik 10y agoThe space ship is already being developed for the Commercial Crew program. The rocket is a new rocket but with the same engines and the same upper stage. This does not seem so impossible. A couple of delays will happen, but all in all, there is no fundamental problem.
- Udik 10y agoI agree, there is no fundamental problem. But that couple of delays will bring the actual date much further away than "late next year". I'm sure Elon Musk is capable of great things, it's just that he's very obviously squeezing the people in his companies to the limits and beyond, by publicly announcing objectives that are just about possible, provided that his employees will work day and night for entire years.
- nickik 10y agoI simply don't understand why people are always up in arms about his companies being so bad with their employees. Lots of companies push people to do more ours. God knows, I have worked insane hours for far worse reasons. Plus the actual evidence for Elons companies being far worse then anybody else is not really there. Plus, its not like all those educated people that work at SpaceX would live in the gutter if they can't do the job.
- Udik 10y agoThat's a completely different matter, I just meant to say that Elon Musk's estimates are often extremely optimistic. You know (if you're a developer) when you're working on a very exciting piece of code that will do wonderful stuff, and you have clear in your head what you're doing and how to do it, and think "it'll take me an hour, can't wait to see it working" and then at 4 AM you're still there, always in the same state of mind, with half of your brain asleep and the other half still perfectly focused on the result? Yep, I think that's Elon Musk. Still in the splendour of his early twenties :)
- gydfi 10y agoHey, you're right. First flight of the Saturn V was November 1967. First trip around the moon was December 1968.
- _ph_ 10y agoThey 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.
- Udik 10y agoOk, let's put it like this: how much are you willing to bet that they'll be sending two passengers around the Moon on board of Falcon Heavy/ Dragon 2 next year?
- mozumder 10y agoPlus they've had 2 rockets go explody over the last two years. This is really premature. I'd be surprised if they do this by 2020.
- mikeash 10y agoOne was a ground incident that wouldn't have had people nearby even with a manned mission, and the other would have saved its passengers with the abort system. And if people are willing to pay the money and take the risk, why not?
- wmf 10y agoThis announcement is considerably less vaporous than the Mars plan he announced.
- TimesOldRoman 10y agoI'm not gonna lie...I'd be fine with several directors resigning.
- ctdonath 10y agoMusk'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'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.
- mulmen 10y agoMusk 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.
- ctdonath 10y agoGo read Musk's biography at WaitButWhy.com - and you'll see that summarizing it into a two-line post is difficult. Suffice to say it all serves the goal of colonizing Mars.