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Starship - Dear Moon (Yusaku Maezawa) - Discussion

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The thing that’s crazy when you think about it, getting a human ready to be an astronaut is not trivial. You are in a very hostile, completely unforgiving environment and MUST be trained on all possible types of emergency procedures of which there are a lot. I wonder if we aren’t setting ourselves up for a version of the disasters that befell tourist companies that have tried taking tourists up Mount Everest.
 
I hope that what we read about Maezawa is true. It seems that he is literally donating hundreds of millions of dollars to SpaceX. It’s a bit hard to grasp. I mean, I would do it if I had that kind of bank account, but I’m a very strange person. ;)

As to his training and going to space before the Dear Moon mission, I don’t know if he will be on a Crew Dragon mission or a practice Starship mission. Surely SpaceX will do several crewed Starship earth orbit missions before Dear Moon.

@Cosmacelf I am as certain as I can be that the Dear Moon mission will have some professional astronauts on board besides Maezawa and his selected artists. Yes, modern spacecraft are controlled from the ground they are not “flown” by onboard human pilots, but I cannot imagine that it would be a good idea to send a bunch of amateurs into space on their own.
 
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I wonder if we aren’t setting ourselves up for a version of the disasters that befell tourist companies that have tried taking tourists up Mount Everest.

That's probably one of the best parallels to space tourism and the first place we should look for lessons learned.

It is worth noting that pretty much any Everest expedition guide [and their lead sherpas] have experience on Everest, and almost all of them have experience above 8000m. And contrary to what may be implied, pretty much every person that signs up for an expedition has reasonable mountaineering experience, albeit typically at lower elevations. Still, the barrier to entry is pretty low and is primarily financial.

Ironically, one benefit space tourism has over Everest is a relatively controlled environment. On Everest, weather and traffic can be hard to predict, and psychological variables are difficult to contain. In space, you know when you're going up and you know when you're coming down. Psychological variables are going to be more claustrophobia induced rather than hypoxia or hubris (and thus probably easier to identify as a risk before the mission), and are almost certainly more easier to manage real time--basically restrain and subdue.

Certainly early space tourism missions will have a low student to teacher ratio, compared to Everest where it may be 5-6 clients per staff. Certainly early space tourists are going to be well suited for the mission because none of the tourism companies want it to go sideways; hopefully as tourism becomes more commonplace those companies will still maintain a high bar for qualification.
 
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That's probably one of the best parallels to space tourism and the first place we should look for lessons learned.

It is worth noting that pretty much any Everest expedition guide [and their lead sherpas] have experience on Everest, and almost all of them have experience above 8000m. And contrary to what may be implied, pretty much every person that signs up for an expedition has reasonable mountaineering experience, albeit typically at lower elevations. Still, the barrier to entry is pretty low and is primarily financial.

Ironically, one benefit space tourism has over Everest is a relatively controlled environment. On Everest, weather and traffic can be hard to predict, and psychological variables are difficult to contain. In space, you know when you're going up and you know when you're coming down. Psychological variables are going to be more claustrophobia induced rather than hypoxia or hubris (and thus probably easier to identify before the mission), and are almost certainly more easier to manage real time--basically restrain and subdue.

Certainly early space tourism missions will have a low student to teacher ratio, compared to Everest where it may be 5-6 clients per staff. Certainly early space tourists are going to be well suited for the mission because none of the tourism companies want it to go sideways; hopefully as tourism becomes more commonplace those companies will still maintain a high bar for qualification.

And hopefully that'll all happen fast enough that I'll get a crack at going into space personally. Until sometime in the last few years, the idea that ME would ever go into space was never part of my mental framework or expectation of life. Still isn't mostly, but reading this forum enough the last few years, and watching SpaceX make the progress they're making, I'm starting to think that maybe even ME will sometime get a chance to at least visit space briefly.

Even if I fall into the restrain and subdue category when I get there :)
 
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I don’t know about the “relatively controlled” part of being in deep space. How many people have actually travelled to the moon? We have very little experience doing this. We really don’t know what we don't know yet. Anyways, I hope all turns out well!
 
I don’t know about the “relatively controlled” part of being in deep space.

Think bigger picture; think of what kinds of anomalies might occur and how they might be contained.

When *sugar* goes sideways on a mountaineering expedition on Everest, its basically like herding cats. People start going rogue, people start making dumb decisions, and people start fending for themselves because in the end nobody else is going to get them off the mountain. At 8000m you cant just give someone the proverbial knuckle sandwich and tell them to 'get your act together or you're going to the timeout corner'.

In space, the most probable anomalies all have contingency plans in place, and timeout is a much more plausible solution to total mental breakdown or purposeful sabotage. And, at least for most of the probable or even plausible sideways situations, containment/resolution will be fully implemented by the ‘professionals’ (either in orbit or on the ground), so other than managing the internal feeling of doom and helplessness there's nothing the tourists can do to save themselves. Where the tourist on Everest must do something when it goes all wrong or they will die, the tourist in space essentially must do nothing other than follow some simple and no doubt well rehearsed [especially for early missions] emergency procedure.
 
Think bigger picture; think of what kinds of anomalies might occur and how they might be contained.

When *sugar* goes sideways on a mountaineering expedition on Everest, its basically like herding cats. People start going rogue, people start making dumb decisions, and people start fending for themselves because in the end nobody else is going to get them off the mountain. At 8000m you cant just give someone the proverbial knuckle sandwich and tell them to 'get your act together or you're going to the timeout corner'.

In space, the most probable anomalies all have contingency plans in place, and timeout is a much more plausible solution to total mental breakdown or purposeful sabotage. And, at least for most of the probable or even plausible sideways situations, containment/resolution will be fully implemented by the ‘professionals’ (either in orbit or on the ground), so other than managing the internal feeling of doom and helplessness there's nothing the tourists can do to save themselves. Where the tourist on Everest must do something when it goes all wrong or they will die, the tourist in space essentially must do nothing other than follow some simple and no doubt well rehearsed [especially for early missions] emergency procedure.

Good point. I still think it’s pretty high risk.
 
How many people have actually travelled to the moon?

I was there last year. The immigration check point at the RocketPort was too cumbersome and took too long. The officers were rude too, just like the ones in JKF. Although I had all papers in order, I was grilled if I am going to emigrate or return back to earth. And once out of that, I noticed everything was expensive. Language barrier made it tough too.
 
I still think it’s pretty high risk.

Totally agree. From a macro perspective, spaceflight is going to be high risk for a long time. I'm simply suggesting that there's minimal additional risk adding tourists to a space mission.

Of course, we could wax on the circular nature of space tourism missions not existing without tourists in the first place (there would be no risk to a tourist if there's no tourist). But...even then the statistical risk will come down as mission quantity goes up, so while the total number of people put at risk obviously is going to be higher as a result of space tourism, the risk to any one individual will decrease with the growth of space tourism.
 
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Totally agree. From a macro perspective, spaceflight is going to be high risk for a long time. I'm simply suggesting that there's minimal additional risk adding tourists to a space mission.

Of course, we could wax on the circular nature of space tourism missions not existing without tourists in the first place (there would be no risk to a tourist if there's no tourist). But...even then the statistical risk will come down as mission quantity goes up, so while the total number of people put at risk obviously is going to be higher as a result of space tourism, the risk to any one individual will decrease with the growth of space tourism.
Consider a spherical tourist...
 
In space, the most probable anomalies all have contingency plans in place, and timeout is a much more plausible solution to total mental breakdown or purposeful sabotage. And, at least for most of the probable or even plausible sideways situations, containment/resolution will be fully implemented by the ‘professionals’ (either in orbit or on the ground), so other than managing the internal feeling of doom and helplessness there's nothing the tourists can do to save themselves. Where the tourist on Everest must do something when it goes all wrong or they will die, the tourist in space essentially must do nothing other than follow some simple and no doubt well rehearsed [especially for early missions] emergency procedure.

Apollo 13...

Space is very hard. As good as today's technology is, we still have minimal human space flight experience beyond LEO. Even non human space flight to the Moon is still challenging. Just look at the number of robotic Moon missions that have failed in the last decade. The professionals are needed for the what if, which is more likely to happen than not.
 
Apollo 13...

Space is very hard. As good as today's technology is, we still have minimal human space flight experience beyond LEO. Even non human space flight to the Moon is still challenging. Just look at the number of robotic Moon missions that have failed in the last decade. The professionals are needed for the what if, which is more likely to happen than not.

And the critical pros in Apollo 13 were on Earth working to keep the 3 specialists in the ship alive. Other than making new CO2 scrubbers, was there anything the crew did that could not have been replicated by modern remote control/telemetry? (Maybe a few switch flips for total power cut, but one trained crew member out of 40 passengers could handle that)

No one is going to do a Neil Armstrong manual landing with Starship.
 
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