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A new wrinkle in the SpaceX saga is emerging: the repurposing of the crew version of the Dragon spaceship as a lunar lander (!) Remember that the crew version will have deployable landing legs, additional avionics for precision landings and 4 high powered thrusters not in the cargo version (below imagry is cargo Dragon)
How serious is this being taken? Serious enough that NASA & other aerospace engineers are discussing it on the forums where they hang out. This and the mechanics of a manned Dragon mission to lunar orbit. Seems if you combine pieces from their existing stuff they have most of what's needed.
The path looks something like this -
1. remove the external aeroshell, parachutes and heat shield (lowers weight)
2. lighten the structure of the landing legs and add a folding egress ladder
3. increase throttle-ability of the landing thrusters
4. add capacity of oxygen, water & other consumables
5. reduce crew size to 3, increasing available cargo space
6. build a service module/Earth departure stage - probably just using a Falcon 9 2nd stage shell, 2-3 landing thruster as mains, crew O2 tank, larger solar arrays, Draco maneuvering thrusters (like those on Dragon itself) and hypergolic fuels.
Also possible as a SM/EDS main engine: using a hypergolic version of Falcon 1's 2nd stage Kestrel engine.
The following shows the internal structure of Dragon, minus the landing legs and rockets which have not yet been shared (though the new engines will be centered among rearranged Dracos.) I'm working on a visualization based on these and other imagry.
How serious is this being taken? Serious enough that NASA & other aerospace engineers are discussing it on the forums where they hang out. This and the mechanics of a manned Dragon mission to lunar orbit. Seems if you combine pieces from their existing stuff they have most of what's needed.
The path looks something like this -
1. remove the external aeroshell, parachutes and heat shield (lowers weight)
2. lighten the structure of the landing legs and add a folding egress ladder
3. increase throttle-ability of the landing thrusters
4. add capacity of oxygen, water & other consumables
5. reduce crew size to 3, increasing available cargo space
6. build a service module/Earth departure stage - probably just using a Falcon 9 2nd stage shell, 2-3 landing thruster as mains, crew O2 tank, larger solar arrays, Draco maneuvering thrusters (like those on Dragon itself) and hypergolic fuels.
Also possible as a SM/EDS main engine: using a hypergolic version of Falcon 1's 2nd stage Kestrel engine.
The following shows the internal structure of Dragon, minus the landing legs and rockets which have not yet been shared (though the new engines will be centered among rearranged Dracos.) I'm working on a visualization based on these and other imagry.