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8:40 pm
November 16, 2009
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brmj
| | Rochester, New York, United States | |
| Member | posts 402 | |
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Ijust realized that even if we end up going with commercial launch vehicles we could probably do a lunar flyby or perhaps even a landing for less than twice what people are paying for trips to the ISS. This is bassed on $20 to $35 million flights to the ISS and a projected launch cost of $35 million on a Falcon 9, which will lift 10,450 kg to LEO and is intended to be man rated. That ought to be more than enough mass, and potentially enough to launch our lander for the next mission on the same rocket, or maybe even enough to go with an Apollo-like design and bring the lander with us for that mission.
I think this might be an excellent source of funding in the future. Thoughts?
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Main work groups: Propulsion (booster), Spacecraft Engineering, Computer Systems, Navigation and Guidance (software)
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9:07 pm
November 16, 2009
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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Very much agreed. I have always assumed that as soon as we could safely be sending people into space, we'd start doing it for money. Granted, all I had in mind for now were suborbital and LEO flights (since we'll have to practice these lots ourselves before the lunar mission anyway), but it makes no sense not to do lunar stuff as well (using a free return trajectory the trip would be pretty straight forward). I do think this would require a second spacecraft design since our current ones are for one person only and I think it would be advisable to have a properly trained pilot onboard, but it could basically just be an enlargened version of our one person craft.
We *really* need names for these things, to make them easier to discuss!
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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10:37 am
November 19, 2009
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josh
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Post edited 4:38 pm – November 19, 2009 by josh
how bout F.I.R.S.T first independent return space tourism?
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