Credit Elon Musk, the man knows an opportunity when he sees one.
Space tourism has been a thing for some time now, as this lengthy Wikipedia article will have you know. But so far, no manned private missions have been as ambitious as what Musk’s SpaceX just announced:
Two thrill seekers are paying SpaceX to make a trip around the moon next year.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced Monday afternoon that the space tourists had already placed a significant deposit for the trip. The travelers will undergo fitness tests and begin training later this year.
“Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration,” SpaceX said in a blog post.
The timing couldn’t be better, considering the current state of world events. Harder to get farther away from whatever’s occurring around the globe than to no longer be on the globe itself. Indeed, you’re kind of finding a new globe, in a sense.
As CNN notes, this would be the first manned trip outside low-earth orbit since the end of the Apollo program in the early ’70s.
Of course, this is a highly aggressive timeline, and considering the stakes of the venture (and Musk’s own previous history when it comes to promising beyond his own grasp) it’s possible SpaceX can’t make it happen. The spacecraft that would theoretically be involved remains untested (obviously), and considering the very real dangers inherent to this sort of operation, SpaceX won’t be cutting any corners.
You’d hope, anyway.
There is, of course, an alternate way to look at Musk’s plan:
Elon Musk starts a space tourism company catering only to the idiot ultra-rich. He then fires them one after the other into space.
— ¡BUM CHILLUPS AKA SPENCER HALL! (@edsbs) February 27, 2017
Elon Musk is thinning out his rivals by putting them into orbit forever, and then becoming some kind of light rail baron
— ¡BUM CHILLUPS AKA SPENCER HALL! (@edsbs) February 27, 2017
This is such Bond villain shit I'm deeply impressed, and support it fully
— ¡BUM CHILLUPS AKA SPENCER HALL! (@edsbs) February 27, 2017
Please support highly hazardous experimental travel for only our wealthiest, stupidest citizens
— ¡BUM CHILLUPS AKA SPENCER HALL! (@edsbs) February 27, 2017
If this program ends up working, it will absolutely dominate the news when it’s time for launch (and as this is private space exploration, it’s one of the few times a business gets to launch figuratively and literally.)
No word on if one of the two customers is Michael Bay, and he’s just trying to figure out how close he came to the truth in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
[CNN]
