Hey guys! It's Amy! And now SpaceX has
come out announcing that it will send
people to the moon by the end of 2018 in
a different Apollo 8 style mission. You
guys guessed it: I have feelings
therefore it is soapbox time!
So one of my biggest frustrations with
SpaceX isn't about how the company does
its rocketry because it does build
rockets that work so, you know, that's
always a good thing. the problem with
SpaceX as somebody who covers or has in
the past more than now covered space
news, is that because SpaceX is privately
funded it doesn't have to actually say
much of anything. Right, NASA's a public
company beholden to taxpayers like
myself therefore NASA has to tell me all
of the things that I want to know that,
you know, aren't classified. SpaceX on the
other hand is completely private and
doesn't actually have to say anything,
which means the press conference about
this new lunar mission actually does say,
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." That gives me no
information, and that is the first
paragraph of the press release! I mean, I
did do a post graduate certificate in
public relations and corporate
communications and we were always told
not to get into flowery details right
off the bat in a press release... but I
digress. As for actual mission details,
the crew in this case will be two private
citizens; they have not yet been named
but apparently they do know each other
which is good since they are going to
sit in the relatively small cewed
version of the Dragon capsule for at
least eight days. The mission will launch
from NASA's pad 39A which is where all
the Apollo missions to the moon launched
from with the exception of Apollo 10
which left from pad 39B. The crew will
fly faster than any humans have before,
which doesn't actually say how fast.
There is an article from the verge that
says the mission will skim the Moon's
surface, which doesn't really say
anything about the altitude from the
moon surface but I imagine it's close
but obviously not touching because if it
did going faster than any humans before
that would just be a bad day... try doing
that in Kerbal Space Program; Scott
Manley will tell you that it is just
going to end in epic disasters and
explosions but, you know, in Kerbal fun
explosions. In real life, not fun
explosions. And after passing by the Moon,
the crew will go between 300 and 400
thousand miles away from the Earth
before looping back to come back home.
That's all it says it at the mission. And then the spacex news release adds
that there will probably be some
biomedical experiments or fitness data
gathered on the flight. So as you can
kind of guess from the lack of science
details described in the press release
about this mission there isn't really a
science component to this mission. Rather,
there's a very large money component.
Apparently the two private citizens have
already made a very significant
financial down payment on the flight;
they haven't actually exposed how much
the mission is going to cost or how much
the two private citizens are paying to
be passengers on the mission but Musk
said that it is comparable more or less
to NASA buying tickets on a Soyuz rocket
up to the International Space Station,
which as a point of reference is about
80 million dollars a seat. And the two
private citizens are going to start
training for their mission later this
year, which gives them a little over a
year to get ready to fly to the Moon... so
again that's an indication that there's
not really going to be a lot of hard
science involved. They are going to be
passengers. They're going to be along for
a ride and have a really spectacular
view frankly and jealous of that bit but
they aren't really going to be flying
the mission or actively participating in
the flight beyond payloads and maybe
gathering some biomedical data or
fitness data or some other human factors
data that could parlay into a later
program. The mission will be entirely
automated; again the astronauts are not
NASA astronauts who have been training
for years, who are engineers, who are
pilots who have that background. They're
private citizens with a lot of money
who will have a really spectacular view
for at eight days maybe 10 depending on
exactly the mission trajectory. Now the
really interesting thing about the
flight is how SpaceX will go about
making it an automated mission. Now
automated spacecraft are nothing new;
we've sent more spacecrafts without humans
on board to interesting destinations on
insane trajectories than we have
anything with people on board. We
generally send people up to the
International Space Station which is
like NASCAR for space just... making orbits.
It's easier to get there say then to get
to Pluto doing multiple gravity assists
and mid-course corrections, but even in
those cases there are humans involved,
right? Every time the New Horizons
spacecraft had to make a trajectory
adjustment there was a whole crew of
scientists and engineers having meetings
to figure out exactly
to make those changes, and then sending
the commands after the computer, and then
the computer would executed it. So the
question is whether SpaceX will do
something like that or whether they will
actually train the astronauts-slash-private
citizens-turned-astronauts to do any
kind of work with the systems on board
for these kinds of trajectory nudges and
mid-course corrections. So the real
question becomes why is this mission a
thing? I mean, you don't need humans on
board to do an interesting trajectory
check. You don't need to send humans to
the Moon to gather biomedical data. You
don't really need this mission to happen
at all, but it is, as Musk said, a
significant driver of revenue into SpaceX.
These kinds of privately funded
missions could actually be a huge source
of revenue for a private space company.
There seems to be a point where people
get so wealthy that they get bored of
what they have access to on the
Earth and want to go into space, so maybe
these private missions like going to the
Moon without having to actually do any
of the work just really taking a risk to
ride on a rocket and being a passenger
on a largely automated mission it could
be that these missions to space which
are more exotic than just a flight up
into Earth orbit or even the, of course
just a suborbital flight... I mean going to
the Moon is way more exciting than a
suborbital spaceflight mission. It could
be that these will become such an
important source of revenue for SpaceX
that Musk really does need the money to
get his missions to Mars, namely get
himself to Mars, within the timeframe of
sort of the mid century or earlier than
that, about 2040. So maybe the purpose of this
mission is really just for SpaceX to get
another source of revenue to develop
bigger concepts like all the technology
it needs for going to Mars. So I guess
that's enough of a reason to go to the
Moon with tourists? I mean, this is sort
of a whole other realm of space tourism
that hasn't existed until now and really
doesn't exist currently; it exists in
potentia. I mean, we can look forward to
maybe a hundred years from now two
hundred years from now when we have
access to other planets and other moons
around other planets and this becomes
the vacation. We could actually take a
summer on Europa or something. Maybe
that is the future, but apparently the
small-scale version of that is
very much on the horizon which is
private missions to the moon. And maybe
it's enough to take these kinds of risks
and fund these kinds of missions if it's
funded by the person who's going. So
there may not really be a reason for
this mission to go beyond revenue for
SpaceX, and I guess that's enough of a
reason to go to the Moon. SpaceX has
already made the connection and anybody
who knows anything about space will also
very quickly make this connection that
this mission sounds a lot like a private
version of Apollo 8. Apollo 8 was a
mission that launched on December 21st
of 1968. Three astronauts Jim Lovell Bill
Anders and Frank Borman went to the Moon,
orbited 10 times, and then came back to
splash down on December 27th. This
missions played a vital role in NASA
getting to the Moon by the end of the
1960's, the challenge that President
Kennedy had set in 1961. There's no real
reason to do a mission like that outside
of the context of Apollo. If you'd like
to share more about my thoughts on that
specifically check out this video right
here where I talk about it in great
length... So it's interesting to note that
this analysis from SpaceX comes just
days after NASA announced a similar
intention to launch astronauts to the
moon on another Apollo 8 style mission
with its first Orion SLS flight at the
end of 2018. Now this might actually
explain why NASA is suddenly so keen on
going back to the moon maybe it's not
just Trump trying to have his own
Kennedy moment and do something
inspirational and grand for the sake
of humanity! No, maybe it's NASA actually
trying to keep pace with SpaceX. It's
never really had a private company
running neck-and-neck with it because
the private company can take a lot more
risks than a government company can in
this current climate. But i also don't
totally think it would be the case that
NASA would see SpaceX as enough of a
competitor to actually launch a
seriously competing mission. I mean, the
NASA moon mission and the SpaceX moon
mission are basically the exact same
mission. If anything I would say the
SpaceX one has more of a rationale to
get off the ground because no bucks no
Buck Rogers. You need money to make your
rockets fly and that's something that
NASA is very much lacking in this day
and age. So what are my thoughts about
SpaceX potentially going to the moon at
the end of next year? Well, SpaceX can do
it wants. It's not using taxpayer money. If
these
two private citizens want to spend their
millions or billions probably of dollars
to get a rocket off the ground and to
take a joyride to the Moon then no one
can really stop them. It''s also worth
noting that this flight would have to be
sanctioned and approved by the FAA.
Whether that could happen or what would
stop that I don't know. So there are a
few hurdles for SpaceX jump through
before this mission can actually leave
the ground. It's also worth noting that
SpaceX is kind of notorious for missing
its initial deadlines, but to be fair
they are working with things like
massive rockets and space flight, neither
which are exactly easy. Target flights
for manned missions to the ISS have been
pushed back as have rocket launches and
Musk originally want to send crews to
Mars by the early 2020s and that's
looking increasingly unrealistic,
although Mars is of course still Elon
Musk's big goal. So final thoughts on
SpaceX going to the moon? It's a private
company and private citizens using their
own money to go somewhere. I mean they
can do what they want. They can fly around
the world, they could fly to the Moon...
You've got money you can go where that
money will take you that's just kind of
how money works... I hear. But very much like
my thoughts about NASA deciding to maybe
go to the Moon in 2018 just for the sake
of going to the Moon in 2018, I kind of
want to see mission to the Moon be
building to something. I mean, again, rich
people can do whatever they want with
all of their money that's... I can't tell
them not to do that but it would be
really great if this mission was
actually helping build something bigger,
something that would push all of
humanity outward more into space. But I
don't know. I'm on team "I like science" so
I want to see more interplanetary
missions discovering things that we
don't know about other planets and about
distant moons so that when we actually
have the technology to really send
humans beyond low-earth orbit and beyond
the moon that we actually know where
we're going, that we're not just going to
Mars because it's there, that maybe we're
going to Europa because it turns out
there's something really amazing there
that humans need to be in situ to discover.
I mean, that's the way I would like to
see it's approaching spaceflight, not
just putting astronauts or rich people
on rockets for the sake of inspiration
so they can carry the hope of humanity
with them going to the Moon. But that's
just my thoughts and you know what? I'm
on my soapbox so I'm allowed to have my
thoughts! But now I wanted to hear your
guys' thoughts because
I know you're going to sound off in the
comments. Do you think a mission like
this, just private citizens buying their
way to the moon because they have the
money, do you think there's any value in
this as a mission? Is it inspirational? Is
it kind of sticking it to the rest of us
who can't afford to just take a tourist
trip to the Moon? Or is it actually going
to do some good for the next generation
of kids to inspire them to be great
engineers or maybe just inspire them to
marry old billionaires and then take
that money and go to the Moon themselves
someday? Let me know what you think about
this mission and about the whole new
venue of private spaceflight and space
tourism doing things like going to the
Moon?  Because this is a whole whole new
thing beyond Virgin Galactic and
suborbital flights... Said it before and
I'll say it again: this is my personal
channel where I am very opinionated and
don't hold back nearly as much! If you
would like weekly videos that are very
much to straight up space history
educational little nuggets about all the
weirdo fun things I find in archives
through my research be sure to check out
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