There will be four initial teams to open the settlement on the Moon.  Two launches will be required to loft each team and their supplies into orbit.  The Dragon and it’s trunk, attached to the Service Module, will launch on a Falcon Heavy, and a second Falcon Heavy will carry the two cargo units for orbital docking prior to Trans-Lunar Injection.

To accomplish this they will need specific components for each of them:

  1. Dragon V2 to carry each 7 person team from Earth to the Moon
  2. One (1) inflatable airlock (10 ft long, 15 ft diameter, half cylinder)
  3. Service Module – engines to get to the Moon
  4. Two (2) purpose built cargo tugs.  Each designed to carry 16 cargo containers of 500 lbs each for a total of 16,000 pounds of supplies.

The Capsule

Dragon v2 is SpaceX man-rated capsule, designed to be capable of not only orbital activities, but travelling to the Moon, and to Mars.  The craft is designed for a personell capacity of 7, and an endurance of 1 week up to two years. The capsule’s onboard thrusters are capable of completing soft landings on Earth, the Moon, or Mars.

The Service Module

Basically a Falcon 9 upper stage prepared for the TLI task.

The Inflatable Airlock

Intended to be based on the design of the Bigelow BEAM module, this will be a half cylinder 10 feet long, and 15 feet in diameter.  Designed to fill the opening of the cave-habitat, effective sealing in the atmosphere, and providing and entry-exit from the habitat to the lunar surface.

The Cargo Tug

Patterned after the Masten line of VTOL rockets such as Zeus and Xombie, our cargo tug is a cylindrical center column containing the “rocket”. Around that rocket is placed the cargo rings, attached to the center column.  Cargo “pods”, cylindrical containers are mounted to the cargo rings in two rows, each row sporting up to 500 lbs of cargo each, for a total capacity of 8,000 lbs per cargo tug.

The cargo containers will be divided into three types:

  1. non-pressurised mesh cylinder for mechanical supplies, and tools
  2. non-pressurised enclosed cylinder for dry-goods supplies and food stuffs
  3. Pressurised enclosed cylinder for live cargo:  fish, chickens, insects, plants.