Ride the Pony!
Mar. 3rd, 2017 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rain_gryphonIf I'm reading between the lines correctly, then the two people who are going to ride a SpaceX Dragon around the moon next year are going alone - without a pilot. The capsule is going to be controlled from the ground. Even by my own cold-war era standards of acceptable risk, that seems to be tempting fate just a bit.
Admittedly, they're only going once-around, with no lunar orbit, hence no insertion or second transfer burn, and the capsule is a sane ballistic re-entry design, without wings. There's got to be a transfer burn to leave earth orbit, though, and one expects mid-course corrections out and back. Having a manual backup would be nice.
All that being said, had I the money, and my health allowed, I'd ride it, and too bad if I got killed.
Edit: And I absolutely love SpaceX's attitude in this! They're gonna fly the Falcon Heavy for the first time this summer. They're gonna fly the Crew Dragon for the first time this November. And then, in 2018, they're going to start sending people to the moon. That's the way to do it. That's the way that NASA (and America in general) used to do.
Admittedly, they're only going once-around, with no lunar orbit, hence no insertion or second transfer burn, and the capsule is a sane ballistic re-entry design, without wings. There's got to be a transfer burn to leave earth orbit, though, and one expects mid-course corrections out and back. Having a manual backup would be nice.
All that being said, had I the money, and my health allowed, I'd ride it, and too bad if I got killed.
Edit: And I absolutely love SpaceX's attitude in this! They're gonna fly the Falcon Heavy for the first time this summer. They're gonna fly the Crew Dragon for the first time this November. And then, in 2018, they're going to start sending people to the moon. That's the way to do it. That's the way that NASA (and America in general) used to do.
