Get Musk off Twitter and keep him working on cool stuff like this. To hell with robotic probes. To hell with the scientific returns. I want living people doing the exploring, dammit.
Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese entrepreneur, purchased an entire BFR rocket with plans to ask a handful of artists to join him on his journey – artists who can then create works to inspire others to dream.
Arguably, the part no one expected came when Maezawa said that he didn’t want to experience the flight alone. “I want to share this.” Maezawa will invite six to eight artists of different professional and personal backgrounds – artists who represent the whole of humanity – to join him on the lunar flyby mission… with the only stipulation to their involvement being that they create works thereafter that “inspire the dreamer in all of us.”
At the BFR announcement this evening, Mr. Musk and Maezawa confirmed that the primary reason the mission switched to BFR was to increase the number of artists who could join Maezawa on the flight.
(And I bet there'd still be room to take along a robotic lander if anyone really wants one)
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/09/spacex-announces-bfr-lunar-passenger-earths-artists/
And to hell with the military and secrecy! Let's blow the doors wide open! Let's do missions strictly based on Contributionism; not Capitalism.
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ReplyDeleteYou had me at "get Musk off Twitter".
ReplyDeleteDon't care about the rest. Sorry :)
One detail Scott Manley mentioned in his video about this flight -- the plan is that the cargo compartments at the bottom of the BFS can be swapped out for vacuum-optimized engines when those are both available and necessary. The Raptors used in this current incarnation of the BFS are atmosphere-optimized, which should be fine for a lunar free return flight.
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