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2005-08-10 Home Front: Tech

Fly me to the moon? That'll be $100 million

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Posted by DanNY 2005-08-10 15:36|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Energia can build a moon capable rocket with two person payload for 200 million dollars.

Bull.

Unless the trip is one way only.

Posted by john 2005-08-10 16:07|| 2005-08-10 16:07|| Front Page Top

#2 John, the old Soviet Union did send two-person capsules on an around-the-moon trajectory and back in the 60's.

They were equipped with instrumented dummies and dummy life support.

The capsule was a modified version of a Soyuz (i.e. no orbital module); the reentry forces were pretty high, so you'd want someone in reasonably good physical shape, and space was tight, so you'd probably want two really good friends for your customers... but they launched those missions from a single modified Proton. I don't know what Protons sell for these days, but the overhead cost of launching one is supposedly pretty cheap.

I suspect the Russians *could* have done a manned moon surface mission way back when with multiple Proton launches, but they got too fixated on their super-booster based mission, and when they finally figured out they couldn't get the N-1 to work Apollo had already gotten there, and they figured it would be less embarrassing to not go and pretend they never wanted to.

Posted by Phil Fraering 2005-08-10 18:46|| 2005-08-10 18:46|| Front Page Top

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