SpaceX wants to send two space tourists around the moon in 2018
SpaceX has announced that it plans to fly two private space tourists around the moon in 2018. The company says it has been approached by the two individuals with this request. The two interested parties have already made a significant deposit.
The mission, which is due to take place in the second quarter of 2018, will last about a week. The space tourists will fly close to the moon, then leave the moon behind and go deeper into space and then return to Earth. The mission will take place with the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which will be launched into space with the Falcon Heavy rocket. This has been announced by SpaceX.
The Falcon Heavy rocket will make its first test flight this summer. The Crew Dragon will perform an unmanned test flight to the ISS later this year. The Crew Dragon will operate largely autonomously during spaceflight. The two space tourists, who are not from Hollywood according to SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk, will undergo medical testing and begin training later this year. According to Musk, the two space tourists are aware of the risks. There would be more interested in making this kind of spaceflight.
Musk declined to say how much the two space tourists will have to pay, according to The Verge, but it would be comparable to the cost of a flight to and from the ISS. It will cost NASA more than $80 million to transport an astronaut to the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule. Musk believes that this type of spaceflight can make a significant contribution to SpaceX’s revenue and plans to perform one or two similar flights annually after 2018.
Musk admitted that this space mission would have been impossible without the help of NASA. The American space agency has paid for the lion’s share of the development costs of the Crew Dragon. NASA is also considering a similar mission to the moon in 2018 with its new rocket, the Space Launch System. Earlier, NASA announced that the organization is investigating the possibilities of taking astronauts on this mission. Musk has indicated that if NASA also wants to conduct such a moon mission, this NASA mission will take precedence over SpaceX’s plans.