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It needs more than just the rocket. You also need a lunar lander, and all we have right now are paper sketches of designs that would take more than four years t
by rst 7y ago
It needs more than just the rocket. You also need a lunar lander, and all we have right now are paper sketches of designs that would take more than four years to finish and build, on conventional timelines. (One wild card is the SpaceX Starship, which Elon is talking about having some lunar capability for, on extremely aggressive timelines. But Starship is a risky project in all sorts of ways -- besides which, before trying to take Elon's timelines to the bank, you might want to look at the years of delays before they finally launched Falcon Heavy.)
- rtsil 7y agoMost of the Falcon Heavy delays was because F9 became capable of lifting many of the payloads originally planned for Heavy, which then became (and still is) a solution in search of a problem.
- chasd00 7y agovery true, by the time falcon heavy launched it was more of a novelty than anything else. I'm surprised it wasn't scrapped entirely and the effort redirected to BFR.
- iso947 7y ago> needs more than just the rocket. You also need a lunar lander With blackjack. And hookers. In fact forget the lunar lander.
- mr_toad 7y ago> One wild card is the SpaceX Starship, which Elon is talking about having some lunar capability for, “Some lunar capability” is an understatement. If high elliptical orbital refuelling of Starship works it will completely change the game - eliminating the need for a lander & service module. Instead of delivering a 25-30 ton lander, they’ll land the entire second stage, with 100 tons of cargo (or dozens of passengers), all at a fraction of the cost of the estimate $1 billion SLS launch cost. Starship is already being prototyped, and will probably fly this year or next, while NASAs crewed lunar lander proposals are all just proposals.
- Stevvo 7y agoLucky there isn't any wind on the moon to blow it over.