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Submission Statement

I expect we're going to hear a lot more about ballistic lunar transfer trajectories in years to come. They are a much cheaper way for materials to reach lunar and cislunar orbits. Their disadvantage is slowness, but three days versus three months doesn't really matter so much for uncrewed missions. Their big, big advantage is the Sun's gravity does most of the work for you in getting to the Moon. This way you don't need lots of fuel, and get a much cheaper launch from Earth. They are the preferred method for getting cargo to the Lunar Gateway space station.

Hakuto-R M1 is packing a lot into 340 kg (about the weight of 4 domestic washing machines) - including a lunar rover vehicle.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:

Submission Statement

I expect we're going to hear a lot more about ballistic lunar transfer trajectories in years to come. They are a much cheaper way for materials to reach lunar and cislunar orbits. Their disadvantage is slowness, but three days versus three months doesn't really matter so much for uncrewed missions. Their big, big advantage is the Sun's gravity does most of the work for you in getting to the Moon. This way you don't need lots of fuel, and get a much cheaper launch from Earth. They are the preferred method for getting cargo to the Lunar Gateway space station.

Hakuto-R M1 is packing a lot into 340 kg (about the weight of 4 domestic washing machines) - including a lunar rover vehicle.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zj009z/spacex_has_successfully_launched_ispaces_hakutor/izt0dr3/

Wow, that's really exciting news! Congrats to SpaceX and iSpace on the successful launch of the Hakuto-R M1 moon lander. I can't wait to see it land on the Moon in April 2023. It's amazing to see how far we've come in terms of space exploration.

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such a long period of flight on a trajectory from the earth to the moon is due to the fact that an ion engine will be used for acceleration in outer space?

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Can someone ELI5 why it will take until April to reach the moon? Does the ‘low-energy transfer ballistic lunar transfer trajectory’ mean that it’s slowly drifting towards the moon? If so what was the reason behind this choice versus quickly going to the destination? Thanks in advance!

How much cheaper is cheaper? I didn’t see an answer in the article. Would this make it feasible to start mining on the moon? Assembling rockets for deeper space missions?

Kinda, yeah! Basically what they're doing is taking a lot less fuel, and utilizing various gravity transfers to get out to the moon without having to expend a bunch of fuel to speed up, and then expend that same amount of fuel to slow down again once they get there.

Thank you for the explanation, that makes sense!

Wish Musk had nothing to do with this so I could care about it.

>>How much cheaper is cheaper?

If they were trying to do this in 3 days like the Apollo missions, then doing it this way is a fraction of the cost. The issue is that a traditional Hohmann transfer orbit you need to use fuel to both accelerate the craft and deaccelerate it at the other end. This requires you to carry several times the payload weight in propellant.

By comparison Hakuto-R M1 needs only a tiny amount of propellant from ion thrusters, as the Sun's gravity is doing almost all the work.

Money wise?

what do we want to mine for one the moon?

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