SpaceX has plans to send tourists around the moon as early as 2018.
Elon Musk’s space ambitions for the common man is happening earlier than previously anticipated, but only if the common man is a very wealthy tourist looking to go to space. There are at least two people with the means and the interest to go out to space, and it does not include anyone from the Hollywood elite.
The flight would take the two passengers around the moon and back to the Earth as part of the trip. It would mark the farthest that humans have gone from the Earth into space in nearly 40 years.
Musk noted that SpaceX’s ambitions should’t surprise anyone as it is part of an effort to explore and colonize the great unknown out into space. It is unclear how much the trip would cost.
“A little bit more than the cost of a crewed mission to the space station would be,” he said. The company’s Falcon rockets are currently being ironed out to see if it can handle such a trip.
SpaceX is also working with its Dragon capsule, which is a vessel that goes back and forth to the International Space Station (ISS). There is an even-larger device called the Falcon Heavy, which is a larger rocket that will make its debut sometime over the coming summer.
