SpaceX plans to launch two paying passengers on a tourist trip around the moon next year using a spaceship under development for Nasa astronauts and a heavy-lift rocket yet to be flown, the launch company announced on Monday.
The launch of the first privately funded tourist flight beyond the orbit of the International Space Station is tentatively targeted for late 2018, Space Exploration Technologies chief executive Elon Musk told reporters on a conference call.
Mr Musk declined to identify the customers or say how much they would pay to fly on the weeklong mission, except to say that it is "nobody from Hollywood".
Plans call for SpaceX’s two-person lunar venture to fly some 300,000 to 400,000 miles from Earth past the moon before Earth’s gravity pulls the spacecraft back into the atmosphere for a parachute landing. That trajectory would be similar to Nasa’s 1968 Apollo 8 mission beyond the moon and back.
SpaceX joins a growing list of companies developing commercial passenger spaceflight services. Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Richard Branson’s London-based Virgin Group, is testing a six-passenger, two-pilot spaceship to carry paying customers about 62 miles above Earth, high enough to experience brief microgravity and see Earth’s curvature against the blackness of space. Tickets to ride cost USD 250,000 each.