{"id":40309,"date":"2017-09-28T04:00:16","date_gmt":"2017-09-28T08:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40309"},"modified":"2017-09-27T10:43:09","modified_gmt":"2017-09-27T14:43:09","slug":"back-to-the-moon-in-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/09\/28\/back-to-the-moon-in-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the Moon in 2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Stross<\/a> thinks a US circumlunar expedition is on the cards for just two years ahead, and he might well be right:<\/p>\n

If Donald Trump is still president, US astronauts will return to circumlunar space around July 16th, 2019 …<\/p>\n

That’s the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. It’s also 6-12 months on from the projected date of Musk’s translunar tourist trip on a Falcon Heavy.<\/p>\n

I expect Falcon Heavy to be delayed a few months, minimum, because no new launch vehicle ever flies on time, especially a crew-rated one, but it’s currently due to fly around December this year for the first time, with a vehicle currently undergoing integration at Cape Canaveral and commercial orders for subsequent flights. It’s rather hard to describe it as vaporware at this point. The same goes for the Dragon 2 crewed capsule; it’s due for a first uncrewed orbital flight test in March 2018, and a crewed orbital test flight later in 2018.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I’m making this a prediction, however, because the POTUS factor.<\/p>\n

July 2019 lies within the term in office of Donald Trump (or Mike Pence, depending whether impeachment\/removal has happened first then). Trump is nothing if not an egomaniac, and offering him the opportunity to make a historic phone call to lunar orbit in front of the TV cameras is a guaranteed ego-stroke. Trump is of an age to have young-adult memories of Apollo and I can’t see the idea not appealing to him if he can take credit for it.<\/p>\n

So I’m betting that this is how Musk will fund development of his lunar-orbit capability.<\/p>\n

(Terms and conditions: prediction invalid in event of nuclear war, global environmental or economic collapse, Trump and<\/em> Pence both<\/em> being impeached, or a Dragon 2 capsule exploding in flight, because any of these things might impact the launch schedule.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note: Charles is quite a fan of the impeachment scenario, if you hadn’t picked that up from context. The fact that he’s very much not<\/em> a Trump fan actually makes his prediction that much more striking: he has no interest or desire to see Trump get a propaganda coup to end his term in office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Stross thinks a US circumlunar expedition is on the cards for just two years ahead, and he might well be right: If Donald Trump is still president, US astronauts will return to circumlunar space around July 16th, 2019 … That’s the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. It’s also 6-12 months on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,13],"tags":[1037,1006,70,51,708],"class_list":["post-40309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-science","category-usa","tag-donaldtrump","tag-elonmusk","tag-moon","tag-pr","tag-spacex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-au9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40310,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40309\/revisions\/40310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}