[aKira]

Вот это по настоящему дерзко. Не EM-1 конечно, но всё равно впечатляет.

SpaceX announces two-person mission around the Moon in 2018.

Humans may once again travel from the Earth to the Moon according to the latest announcement by SpaceX. Elon Musk, in a teleconference arranged with less than 24-hours notice, stated Monday afternoon, February 27, that the company intends to send two private citizens on a circumlunar voyage sometime in late 2018.

The week-long mission would see the travelers in a Crew Dragon spacecraft on a free-return trajectory around the Moon, ultimately reaching a distance of 397,600 miles before returning to the Earth. Dragon would launch atop a Falcon Heavy rocket from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center – the same launch pad where the original Lunar missions departed from in the 1960s and 1970s.

Musk stated that the individuals, which have not been identified yet, will begin health and fitness training later this year. SpaceX was approached by the two individuals for the mission and placed a “significant deposit” on the flight.

He also did not disclose the exact amount the mission would cost but stated that the individual price of each lunar seat was “on par” with what NASA is currently paying Russia to transport their astronauts to the ISS on Soyuz vehicles. These seats are around $80 million dollars per person per flight.

“I think this should be a really exciting mission that gets the world really excited about sending people into deep space again,” Musk said. “I think it should be super inspirational.”

SpaceX’s goal of a Lunar Dragon flight is within the realm of technical possibility for the company, though there are still significant hurdles to overcome. Crew Dragon’s systems will not require many significant modifications as the capsule was designed for interplanetary travel from the beginning. The PICA-X heat shield is capable of withstanding the intense heat generated upon reentering the Earth’s atmosphere at lunar velocities of 32,000 miles per hour. Only the spacecraft’s communications systems will have to be significantly modified to allow for the greater distance between the spacecraft and receiving stations on the ground.

Falcon Heavy is scheduled to make its first demonstration mission in the summer of 2017, and the first Crew Dragon is slated for an uncrewed flight test later in 2017. Flights with astronauts on board are not planned until March 2018, when the first crewed missions to the International Space Station are scheduled to begin. SpaceX hopes that if this timetable holds, the data and experience gathered through these initial flights into Low Earth Orbit will be sufficient for the circumlunar mission in late 2018.

SpaceX’s announcement has come less than two weeks after NASA’s announcement that the agency is considering adding astronauts to the first flight of its Space launch System rocket in early 2019 on a flight known as Exploration Mission 1. EM-1 will see an Orion capsule make a circumlunar flight on a mission also lasting around a week.

Private citizens paying for flights aboard Crew Dragon has not been publicly considered by SpaceX before, though Musk stated that multiple others have approached the company in recent months for possible trips into space. Musk hinted that the company could take in around 12% of their budget if it sold some flights to public customers.