> I wonder how much effort it would take to enable Crew Dragon to fly people to the Moon and pull the rug from under Orion's feet? As an avid Kerbal Space Prog

> I wonder how much effort it would take to enable Crew Dragon to fly people to the Moon and pull the rug from under Orion's feet? As an avid Kerbal Space Program player (but not a rocket engineer!), I feel like it shouldn't take that much effort compared to what SpaceX has already done. Given that Falcon Heavy has the capability to get the Lunar Gateway to Lunar orbit (1), one Falcon Heavy should easily be able to get a robotic tug in LEO and another FH launch could get one in orbit around the moon. Then the Crew Dragon could launch on the Falcon 9, rendezvous with the tug in LEO and then go to the moon. To land I expect a special trunk with it's own Super Draco engines and fuel could land the capsule on the moon and take it back to orbit, potentially with help from the capsule Super Dracos as a sort of second stage. The Dragon would then rendezvous with the second tug that takes the capsule back to LEO so that the reentry would be at already certified speeds. This way nothing would have to change for the Crew Dragon itself so it wouldn't have to be recertified. With this plan the only new things SpaceX would have to make would be the robotic tugs using vacuum optimized Merlin engines and a special trunk for the Crew Dragon that would let it land and take off of the moon. I do wonder if the Crew Dragon's life support systems are rated to last this long and out of LEO. It also would be a one shot program like Apollo which seems antithetical to how SpaceX operates, so unless Elon does it for bragging rights as the first purely private moon landing I don't see it happening. (1) https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-planning-to-launch-an-integrated-lunar-gateway-in-2023/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-planning-to-lau...