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During a press conference at his company's Hawthorne, CA headquarters, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced the first planned private passenger to travel into deep space and around the Moon. Yusaku Maezawa, a billionaire fashion entrepreneur and art collector, paid an undisclosed amount to become one of the first people to fly on a SpaceX Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), with a target date of 2023. If the launch happens, he won't be going alone. Maezawa (aka "MZ") plans to invite at least six to eight artists to accompany him on a journey around the Moon. The passengers chosen may be painters, sculptors, musicians, fashion designers, dancers, film directors, architects, etc. and are intended to represent the Earth and participate in an art exhibition after returning to Earth. Musk himself has also been invited. The project is called #dearMoon.
Yusaku Maezawa approached SpaceX and made a contribution that will pay for a "non-trivial" amount of the BFR's development costs. During the Q&A, Musk estimated that the entire development of BFR would cost around $5 billion, or no less than $2 billion and no more than $10 billion. Other potential sources of funding for BFR development include SpaceX's top priority, Crew Dragon flights to the International Space Station (ISS), as well as satellite launches and Starlink satellite broadband service.
Maezawa (along with a guest) was a previously announced anonymous customer for a Falcon Heavy ride around the Moon. SpaceX currently has no plans to human-rate the Falcon Heavy. The switch from Falcon Heavy to BFR will substantially increase the maximum number of passengers and comfort level attainable on a nearly week-long mission, since the Crew Dragon 2 has a pressurized volume of just 10 m3, about 1% of the volume of the BFS.
Some changes have been made to the BFR's design. The height of the full rocket (spaceship and booster) will now be around 118 meters, from 106. Incidentally, the Space Launch System Block 2 Cargo will be 111.25 meters tall. The pressurized volume of the spaceship (BFS) portion was estimated at around 1,000-1,100 m3, greater than that of the ISS, and up from a previous estimate of 825 m3. The booster now has 3 prominent fins, two of which can rotate. The third does not move and has no aerodynamic function whatsoever; it serves as the third landing leg. One major motivating factor behind the redesign? Aesthetics, according to Musk. This is supposed to be the final iteration of the design in terms of broad architectural decisions.
Early in the presentation, BFR's payload capacity to low-Earth orbit and other destinations (with in-orbit refueling) was listed as "over 100" metric tons with full reuse, down from the 150 metric tons that has been talked about since 2017. This appears to be due in part to the use of seven sea-level Raptor engines on the BFS. Two of the rear cargo sections around these engines could be removed and the engines can be switched out for vacuum Raptor engines in another iteration of BFS, which would presumably have a higher payload capacity. Two, and possibly as many as four, of the seven engines can fail without compromising the BFS's ability to land.
"Grasshopper"-style vertical takeoff and landing tests are still planned for 2019, at the company's South Texas Launch Site near Brownsville, TX. High velocity flights and tests of the booster are planned for 2020. The first orbital flights could happen around 2021, and may launch from a floating platform. Musk indicated that there would be several uncrewed tests of the BFR before any humans are sent on it, including an uncrewed flight around the Moon.
Due to the low amount of payload on a cislunar joyride, passengers may only have to experience 2.5-3 g during ascent, instead of around 5 g. Depending on how the BFS returns to Earth, passengers could experience 3 g or 6 g on re-entry. Although the exact mission profile has not yet been decided, the BFS will probably "skim" the surface of the Moon before returning to a higher altitude, so that the passengers can get a much closer look at the Moon's surface than what is portrayed in the current flight plan. The total flight time is estimated at just over 5 days and 23 hours, with around 31 hours spent in the vicinity of the Moon (the flyby).
SpaceX press conference (1h11m44s).
Also at Ars Technica, The Verge (alt), and Fox News.
Previously: SpaceX Plans to Fly a Passenger Around the Moon Using BFR
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:56PM (3 children)
You don't stay a billionaire by spending your own money. SpaceX scored lucrative contracts even when it wasn't clear that they would be able to deliver. As Musk noted at the press conference, SpaceX's first three Falcon 1 flights were failures, and the fourth was finally successful. Then NASA gave them a launch contract. If that test flight had been a failure, that would have been the end of SpaceX. But they still hadn't flown a Falcon 9, and landing and reusing rockets multiple times was a distant dream.
Compared to old players like Boeing/ULA, SpaceX may have been helped by starting from a clean slate and relying more heavily on computers to design and simulate rockets. They also operated with the goal of creating cost-efficient rockets, rather than cost-plus pork contracts. And now that they have a working rocket that can become cheaper over time with partial reusability, they get to pocket the difference, including the difference between their rocket and competitors (NASA pays way more than $60 million for ISS cargo launches).
SpaceX does take risks. Attempting landings when it was unclear whether it would be achievable, modifying the rocket design for increased reusability, "load-and-go" fueling, etc.
The most directly comparable venture to SpaceX is Bezos's Blue Origin, since they are actually looking at the super-heavy launch business, unlike Virgin Galactic or Bigelow Aerospace. Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX. Their slowness is alluded to by their own motto: Gradatim Ferociter, or "Step by Step, Ferociously". They have taken a token milestone away from SpaceX, but the real fight is going to be with Falcon 9 and especially the BFR. New Glenn or New Armstrong could target 100 tons to LEO or higher, with at least partial reusability.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:00PM (2 children)
SpaceX has certainly taken some big risks, but I'm not sure that the landing attempts are among them. After all - what was risked, exactly? The rockets were going to be destroyed anyway, so all they really risked was wasting the engineering and production time of the landing-specific components, along with a relatively cheap and sturdy landing barge. Risking a small percentage of profits in pursuit of much larger profits is practically no risk at all.
Also, what token milestone did Blue Origin take from SpaceX? The only thing I can think of offhand was the "first" successful landing - years after Falcon 1 had already done the same. Granted F1 was just a testing platform while the New Shepard is... I'm not sure exactly. Expensive amusement park ride?
Blue Origin is certainly taking the safe route though, and I hope it eventually pays off for them. SpaceX could use some real competition.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:24PM (1 child)
It is a risk because they had to devote company resources to developing the reusable capability, building drone ships, etc. with no guarantee that any of it would pay off. The stuff needed to land the rocket also added to the mass.
At least this:
https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/22/10815800/blue-origin-rocket-launch- [theverge.com]
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:40PM
Sure, but it's a risk of lower profit margins, nothing that jeopardizes the company, or the rocket. And I seem to recall them leaving out the landing system when that extra payload was actually needed. I suppose I just don't think of that in the same terms as the sort of company-gambling behavior usually considered as risky. "We're betting the company on the success of X" is risky "We'll slow down development of systems that are already working well, in a market where we have no real competition, to develop technology that will radically increase profit margins" is the sort of thing any non-stagnating company would jump on.
That's right. I forgot about that one. Though I have to wonder about the article calling the New Shepard a "commercial rocket" - have they successfully sold... anything yet? Though I'll grant them that it's a lot more refined than you'd expect for a test platform. They're certainly at least *targetting* a commercial application for it, even if it's not something rockets are typically used for.