Trump and Pence would be perfect first customers
Source:
CNN
Two thrill seekers are paying SpaceX to make a trip around the moon next year.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced Monday afternoon that the space tourists had already placed a significant deposit for the trip. The travelers will undergo fitness tests and begin training later this year.
"Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration," SpaceX said in a blog post.
SpaceX to fly two space tourists around the moon in 2018
Forget the people, forget the capsule, forget the money.
Took a Saturn V, the worlds largest rocket ever built, to get our guys there in 3 days.
They are not going to rebuild something of that caliber and get it to space in one piece.
You are aware that technology has come a LONG way since the Saturn V program, right? There is more computing power in a smart phone than what the Saturn V had for the whole of their onboard computers. And, there is the FACT that SpaceX has successfully launched a rocket into orbit and landed it back on earth safely over 8 times so far.
Nope, if I had the money and was able to go, I'd trust the tech to get me there and back safely.
Computers do not give you TLI. 8 million lbf of thrust does.
Comparing what Space X has launched with something that gives you that thrust is like comparing a paper airplane to a 747.
Here's the specs on the Merlin engine developed by Space X.......
Merlin 1
Main article:
Merlin (rocket engine family)
Merlin 1 is a family of
LOX/
RP-1 rocket engines developed 2003–2012.
Merlin 1A and
Merlin 1B utilized an
ablatively cooled carbon fiber composite nozzle. Merlin 1A produced 340 kilonewtons (76,000 lbf) of thrust and was used to power the first stage of the first two
Falcon 1 flights in 2006 and 2007. Merlin 1B had a somewhat more powerful
turbo-pump, and generated more thrust, but was never flown on a flight vehicle before SpaceX's move to the Merlin 1C.
Merlin 1D rocket engines on a
Falcon 9 v1.1 launch vehicle in
SLC-40 hangar, April 2014
The
Merlin 1C was the first in the family to use a
regeneratively cooled nozzle and combustion chamber. It was first fired with a full mission duty firing in 2007,
[3] first flew on the
third Falcon 1 mission in August 2008,
[4] powered the "first
privately-developed liquid-fueled rocket to successfully reach orbit" (
Falcon 1 Flight 4) in September 2008,
[4] and subsequently powered the first five Falcon 9 flights — each flown with a
version 1.0 Falcon 9 launch vehicle — from 2010 through 2013.
[5]
The
Merlin 1D, was in development in 2011–2012, also with a regeneratively cooled nozzle and combustion chamber, has a vacuum thrust of 690 kN (155,000 lbf), a vacuum specific impulse (Isp) of 310 s, an increased expansion ratio of 16 (as opposed to the previous 14.5 of the Merlin 1C) and chamber pressure of 9.7 MPa (1,410 psi). A new feature for the engine is the ability to throttle from 100% to 70%.
[6] The engine's 150:1 thrust-to-weight ratio is the highest ever achieved for a rocket engine.[7][8] The first flight of the Merlin 1D engine was also the maiden
Falcon 9 v1.1 flight.
[9] On 29 September 2013, the
Falcon 9 Flight 6 mission successfully launched the
Canadian Space Agency's
CASSIOPE satellite into polar orbit, and proved that the Merlin 1D could be restarted to control the first stage's re-entry back into the atmosphere—part of the
SpaceX reusable launch system flight test program—a necessary step in making the rocket reusable.
[10]
