SpaceX moon trip 2018

[Anomalocaris]

I think what he has in mind is not something that would decelerate and enter lunar orbit.   It's probably just putting a capsule into an highly eccentricity earth orbit that loops around but quite far from the moon.  

From nasaspaceflight.com:

The two unnamed passengers have already made a “significant deposit” to fly on the mission that will be a free trajectory flight profile that will take the Dragon 2 close to the surface of the Moon before reaching out up to 400,000 miles into deep space before returning to Earth.

So no lunar orbit. This will be the deepest humans have ever flown into space by far.

How much does the capsule mass at departure from LEO?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

An Airplane won't do much good, no atmosphere worth mentioning.

It's been calculated that, of all the bodies in the solar system with an appreciable atmosphere, an airplane would work best on Titan (battery powered, you couldn't use regular combustible fuels).  Surface pressure 50% more than Earth, with a lower gravity, means that your take-off speed would be about the same as a fast jogging pace.

Second best would be Venus.  Of course, your plane would be on fire the whole time, then the plane's systems would fail, then it would stop being a plane.

Boru

[AFTT47]

From nasaspaceflight.com:


So no lunar orbit. This will be the deepest humans have ever flown into space by far.

How much does the capsule mass at departure from LEO?

No mention of that. Here is the article.

[Angrboda]

Ain't getting me on one of those darn things.

Same here.  I'm a huge supporter of science and technology, but I've got no desire to travel in space, SpaceX's history of exploding rockets not withstanding.  The thought of roller coasters scare the ever-loving crap out of me, I'm not at all sanguine about my reaction to the acceleration and free fall *gulp* that go along with rocket travel.

I don't like SpaceX's history of having things go 'splode. Aside from that I've got no objection to space travel. I wonder if the two passengers will have any input at the controls or whether they will be passive monkeys the whole way. That would kinda suck. A 7-8 day mission with no responsibilities.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Well, I think if I went, my chief responsibility would be not getting vomit all over the altimeter.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

An Airplane won't do much good, no atmosphere worth mentioning.

It's been calculated that, of all the bodies in the solar system with an appreciable atmosphere, an airplane would work best on Titan (battery powered, you couldn't use regular combustible fuels).  Surface pressure 50% more than Earth, with a lower gravity, means that your take-off speed would be about the same as a fast jogging pace.

Second best would be Venus.  Of course, your plane would be on fire the whole time, then the plane's systems would fail, then it would stop being a plane.

Boru

Actually, on Venus, at altitudes where atmospheric pressure is similar to sea level on earth, the temperature is also similar to earth. So electric powered drone that works well on earth will also work on Venus.