What Is dearMoon & How Is It Progressing?
What seems like very long ago, a future mission with Starship was announced. This mission was named dearMoon and had quite an ambitious goal. Right now SpaceX is hard at work developing, manufacturing, and testing Starship along with many pieces of vital equipment throughout Starbase. This can bring up the question of what exactly this mission is and will SpaceX be ready in time?
SpaceX has managed to make immense progress on Starship in a very short period of time. This combined with the launch vehicle’s extremely ambitious goal of being fully reusable, and you have an impressive spectacle. dearMoon is a lunar mission meant to see Starship take a crew of civilian passengers to fly by the Moon on a week-long journey. However, with an initial planned date of 2023 for the mission, even SpaceX might run out of time.
Prior to any civilian Starship mission happening, the company needs a working rocket that is very safe for humans. Currently, SpaceX is hoping to have the first full Starship launch which would mark a major milestone in the launch vehicles’ progress. Even if this launch is successful, there is a lot of work and continued testing that is necessary prior to any humans heading to the Moon.
Background Info
Originally, in early 2017, SpaceX announced that they were planning to fly two space tourists on a free-return trajectory around the Moon. This mission was planned to launch in 2018 using the Crew Dragon 2 capsule on top of a Falcon Heavy. Later in 2018, SpaceX announced it no longer had plans to certify the Falcon Heavy for human spaceflight, and this same lunar mission along with others would be flown on Starship. The new plant was for Starship to fly by the Moon in 2023. Starship is SpaceX’s next-generation launch vehicle meant to change how we access space. Starship is managing to become one of the biggest and most powerful rockets ever made and the goal is for each launch to cost $2 million.
Starship is working to achieve this low cost with affordable materials and mainly a fully reusable design. However, coming in at 120 meters tall and 9 meters wide, this is no easy task. The rocket is made up of two stages starting with the first stage named Super Heavy. This booster is planned to be caught out of mid-air using two large metal arms often referred to as chopsticks. The upper or second stage is named Starship and is 50 meters tall by itself. Starship is planning to enter the atmosphere similar to the Space Shuttle by doing a belly flop maneuver. It will then fall horizontally and relight its engines soon before landing. This will flip the rocket upright and slow it down for a landing. In addition to this, SpaceX has plans for different variants of Starship for different purposes including the Moon, Mars, cargo, crew, and more.
What Is dearMoon?
dearMoon is planning to be the first private lunar mission. In 2023, Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa and the crew of dearMoon will become the first civilian passengers on a lunar Starship mission, featuring a fly-by of the Moon during their week-long journey. Specifically, the passengers will be Maezawa, 8 civilians, and one or two crew members. Maezawwa expects that the experience of space tourism will inspire the accompanying passengers in the creation of something new. The art would be exhibited sometime after returning to Earth to help promote peace around the world. As for SpaceX, the company is confident that the flight is an important step toward enabling access for people who dream of traveling to space.
The original intent of the mission was to bring a crew of artists to the Moon. Most recently, Maezawa calls for applicants to make up a crew of eight individuals from around the world for the week-long lunar trip. In March of 2021, Maezawa announced that eight members of the public will be selected to fly on dearMoon. Later that year he uploaded a video that reveals 1 million people have joined, but there still is no information on who won the 8 seats. The overall goal of this mission is to inspire and work towards the greater goal of better space access. This includes not only highly trained astronauts but civilians as well. Ambitious launch vehicles such as Starship are a great step in the right direction with its size and low cost. The cheaper and safer different companies and agencies can make space flight, the brighter the future of space access, tourism, and more.
Is 2023 Reasonable?
Now that we know the exact plan for dearMoon, it brings up the question of whether or not it will happen by 2023. With all things considered, Starship will likely not be ready by 2023, and a mission closer to 2024 or soon after is a lot more plausible. There are many different reasons and factors that are playing into this estimate. It’s first important to point out that SpaceX is still continuing to make immense progress each day on not only Starship but Starbase as well. This progress has been some of the fastest we have ever seen in the space industry and it’s why ambitious launch dates such as 2023 are even within the question. Prior to Starship launching for this mission, it will need to be very thoroughly tested. Launching humans and launching cargo are completely different challenges. Before launching any humans, many tests need to be done to ensure in this case Starship is ready and safe. These tests include uncrewed mission flights and much more to make sure everything is ready.
Right now in early 2022, Starship is prepping for its first full-stack launch. This means the entire rocket, Starship, and Super Heavy, will liftoff and attempt to reach orbit. So far SpaceX has had many successful tests of Starship, and has made good progress on Super Heavy as well. In the past Starship performed multiple static fires, 150m hops, and 10km flights. While there have been plenty of failures along the way, there have also been many successful tests that are a great sign of the progress of the launch vehicle. Looking at Super Heavy there is still quite a ways to go. The massive booster has had multiple static fires and pressure tests but has not yet flown. Its first flight is planned to happen in the full Starship launch expected to happen very soon. Even if this upcoming launch is successful, SpaceX still has a lot of work before putting any human on top of Starship. SpaceX needs to make sure Starship can safely launch, reach the Moon, enter Earth’s atmosphere, and land consistently before dearMoon. This is what could push back the date of 2023 for the mission.
Conclusion
SpaceX has been planning the dearMoon mission for multiple years now. The mission consists of launching Starship to the Moon and back with a crew of civilians. Its meant to inspire the passengers on board, around the world, and be a step in the right direction for the future of space access. However the initial planned launch date of 2023 is very ambitious. It will be very challenging for SpaceX to be ready for a human Starship flight to the Moon that soon. On the other hand we are talking about SpaceX who has managed incredible things before. With Starship development and testing continuing at a rapid pace in Boca Chica, we will have to wait and see how this mission progresses and the impact it has.