SPACEX TO SEND PRIVATELY CREWED DRAGON SPACECRAFT BEYOND THE MOON NEXT YEAR

maybe after they get a few LEO manned flights in, and haven't killed anyone.

 

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Well that is the goal.

 

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Hmmm Arstechnica gets quite a good mention

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2017/03/06/ranked_the_best__worst_science_news_sites.html

 

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Maybe this is what SpaceX had in mind. I'll go . . . .

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$30 million dollars please.

 

One thing that saddens me a great deal is how since the 1960's, public opinion has dramatically shifted away from supporting manned space exploration.

I think that we see a little of that illustrated here in this thread.

As for me, I applaud it. I like seeing a little ambition and audacity injected back into manned space travel, which after going from the very first Mercury sub-orbital space flights to Apollo trips to the Moon in the span of just ten years, has gone essentially nowhere in the almost 50 years since.

Sure, what SpaceX proposes to do is risky. (Probably not as risky as people think.) But so was everything NASA attempted in the 1960's. That's part of what made it so riveting for the general public.

This might only be the second manned flight of the Dragon 2 capsule, if the first is a NASA-sponsored trip to the space station. But... NASA's second manned Apollo flight was a trip around the Moon too, so as far as using new capsules so aggressively is concerned, what SpaceX is proposing to do isn't unprecedented.

 

Plus a couple of bucks for the beer.

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Drinking a beer through a space helmet might be tough. And if you popped open a beer on the Moon, wouldn't it immediately boil out of the top of the bottle?

 

Jeez! Don't take things so literally dude. I'll bet you ruin fun everywhere you go.

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Problem is if you lose a few people it sets back the programs. Remember Challenger and how the shuttle program basically shutdown for three years after that? Then the Columbia disaster?