One thing I’ve always wondered: let’s say we NEEDED to go to the moon right away, even if it meant taking a few safety shortcuts. Like, aliens landed there and demanded a face-to-face meeting before they destroy our planet and we don’t know how long they’ll wait for us (could be minutes, could be centuries, but who wants to find out?)… What’s the fastest we could, in theory, get there?
At the moment, we just cannot.
We don’t even have space suits that can operate on the moon. The stuff they use on the ISS is made to be used in a total vacuum only, not walking around in the dust and on sharp rocks. There are new suits in development, but nothing final as far as I know. I’m not sure if any are close to being finished, let alone tested and certified.
In theory you could put a Crew Dragon with a big trunk of supplies on a Falcon Heavy, which has the delta-V to go to the moon. But obviously that’s pretty risky, once you go you’re committed. When working in LEO you almost always have some kind of disaster recover scenario available where you abort and get back to earth asap. If you are underway to the moon, there is no turning back. The Crew Dragon has very limited mobility. But I think a trans-lunar injection and orbit around the moon would be possible, with a free return trajectory. So if going around the moon is good enough, that would be possible.
Still it would probably take 9-12 months to put such a mission together and it would be very risky indeed. And like I said, landing on the moon is a total no-go right now.
We went from first flight to landing on the moon in less than 70 years, and are worlds ahead of where we were then. I totally get that we wouldn’t be able to leave tomorrow, but in the “could be minutes, could be centuries” scenario it’s hard to imagine the answer being more than 70 years starting now, and that’s what I’m curious about
Well it all depends on what you want to do. I interpreted your question as we need to go there asap, what can we do? And then the answer is we can do an crewed orbit in about a year time.
If we just want to do it with a good chance of survival, building all the shit we need, but still get there soon, the answer would be different. If we just want to go fast, we would probably use all our heavy lift vehicles to build a moon vehicle in LEO. Then put a big ass engine on that and a bunch of fuel and launch the whole thing to the moon. That’s something we could do within 5-7 years if we would put our minds and money to it. I feel the suits we currently have in development could be ready within that time as well. The lander would be a problem however, we don’t have any of those in development right now. Blue Origin has their Blue Lander, but that’s been on the drawing board for so long now. They did get extra funding to get it ready for 2030, but haven’t shown their progress publicly, so who knows how far they are. On the other hand, if we want to take some risks for this special mission I’m sure we can get something together in 5-7 years if humanity unites and puts their weight/money/faith behind it.
However if we keep going like we’ve been going since Apollo was cancelled, we are never going to get there at all. The politics are complicated and the private sector has been hit or miss. Plus with the Musk factor, we don’t know what’s going to happen. I have zero faith in anything we have going right now.
Just a civilian guess, but 2 or 3 Delta V or Falcon Heavy to put 1 payload into LEO with a command module and lander, then 1 booster with fuel. Short of using prototype lander, fabrication would take months at best. Then a Starship or SLS to get a crew, food, and water into orbit.
It depends, do you need to return your representative, or can we leave him on the moon? Latter is easier. Maybe he can hitchhike back with the aliens.
If it’s a one-way mission, it could be done with a Falcon heavy and a slapped-together lander sourced from NASA. Maybe even an old Gemini capsule or something from the Smithsonian.
Or you could send up a Falcon heavy with fuel payload, rendezvous with the ISS, pick up a 'naut, and steal a Soyuz, although I’m not sure if they can be configured to land on the moon
