This Is Kinda Big News...

[Duncan Edwards]

This will not be one Falcon 9 booster, it will be three Falcon 9's strapped together plus and upgraded second stage or even a third stage as a Falcon Heavy which is supposed to fly sometime late this year. The Dragon 2 capsule has not flown yet, or been man-rated on a Falcon 9. I would say that they, Spacex, are really pushing the Envelope.

It will be a Falcon Heavy. Two F9 first stages as side mounted boosters and another full F9 in the middle. Standard F9 second stage with a single M-Vac engine. SpaceX, nominally, will have 3-5 flights of Dragon 2 under their belt before this trip. Since the baseline Dragon will sit for six months in space without issue it shouldn't be too big a jump to get the Dragon 2 to handle an 8-10 day trip. I agree that's still a long way to go yet but on paper anyway it should work just fine. I doubt Elon would have made a great public announcement if most of the details, navigation, comms, recovery, hadn't already been worked out in some detail.

[kham]

What Duncan said; plus as stated earlier, they have several manned flights planned to the ISS this year, so nothing is getting rushed out the door. And it needs to be remembered (since it was so long ago...) Apollo 8's TLI was the first try for the Saturn V with a crew, and on a TLI trajectory. So there's that. And can you imagine, what earthrise is going to look like , through 21st-century cameras? That, is going to be beyond beautiful

[Duncan Edwards]

... And can you imagine, what earthrise is going to look like , through 21st-century cameras? That, is going to be beyond beautiful

The trajectory that has been discussed so far should take them out to about 400,000 miles. We will have shots of both Earth and most of, maybe all of, the moon in the same frame. Yeah, that's going to be one hell of a selfie for somebody. Currently I'm betting money on Anoush Ansari being at least one of the passengers. Yeah, that was her you saw on the Oscar broadcast, well I didn't, but somebody did. She was there for the awarding of the best foreign language film. She's Iranian by birth but has dual American/Iranian citizenship. She also a telecom billionaire who paid for a ride with the Russians to the space station a few years ago. Brilliant lady and would be the first woman to visit the vicinity of the moon. Yeah, this is gonna be cool.

[kham]

Almost 700,000 km out? No wonder NASA is all asshurt
Plus, a 2.333 ls time lag in comms, that is another thing that will be new.
Cool

[bumberjack]

At least they have an abort procedure in case shit hits the fan during launch. I'd hate to be along for this ride, but considering the alternative, this'll do.

https://youtu.be/1_FXVjf46T8

[nachtjaeger]

"Ansari" as in the Ansari X-prize?

... And can you imagine, what earthrise is going to look like , through 21st-century cameras? That, is going to be beyond beautiful

The trajectory that has been discussed so far should take them out to about 400,000 miles. We will have shots of both Earth and most of, maybe all of, the moon in the same frame. Yeah, that's going to be one hell of a selfie for somebody. Currently I'm betting money on Anoush Ansari being at least one of the passengers. Yeah, that was her you saw on the Oscar broadcast, well I didn't, but somebody did. She was there for the awarding of the best foreign language film. She's Iranian by birth but has dual American/Iranian citizenship. She also a telecom billionaire who paid for a ride with the Russians to the space station a few years ago. Brilliant lady and would be the first woman to visit the vicinity of the moon. Yeah, this is gonna be cool.

[Duncan Edwards]

"Ansari" as in the Ansari X-prize?

... And can you imagine, what earthrise is going to look like , through 21st-century cameras? That, is going to be beyond beautiful

The trajectory that has been discussed so far should take them out to about 400,000 miles. We will have shots of both Earth and most of, maybe all of, the moon in the same frame. Yeah, that's going to be one hell of a selfie for somebody. Currently I'm betting money on Anoush Ansari being at least one of the passengers. Yeah, that was her you saw on the Oscar broadcast, well I didn't, but somebody did. She was there for the awarding of the best foreign language film. She's Iranian by birth but has dual American/Iranian citizenship. She also a telecom billionaire who paid for a ride with the Russians to the space station a few years ago. Brilliant lady and would be the first woman to visit the vicinity of the moon. Yeah, this is gonna be cool.

Yeah, that one.