SpaceX Moon mission: the latest news about Elon Musk’s plans for a trip around the Moon – The Verge

How much are SpaceX tourists actually paying to fly around the Moon?

2017-02-28T12:19:47-05:00

Artist’s rendering of Crew Dragon in orbit. | Photo: SpaceX

Two mystery space tourists put down a "significant deposit" with SpaceX to take a round-trip around the Moon, CEO Elon Musk announced yesterday. Musk didn't say much about the two unidentified passengers, let alone how much money they're shelling out for their Moon voyage. Turns out, it's remarkably difficult to guess the costs of human spaceflight.

"There's not just a line item that says, 'Send this person to space.'"

That's because, unsurprisingly, there's a lot that goes into launching someone into space. There are the obvious costs: the spacecraft, the rocket, and the fuel. But then there are the less obvious, just as key, costs: the yea …

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SpaceX’s Moon flight will be the first truly private ticket to space

2017-02-28T12:07:21-05:00

Yesterday, Elon Musk announced a bold new SpaceX mission for 2018, flying two as-yet-unnamed passengers in a full orbit of the Moon. This will be the first entirely private passenger flight that's ever been attempted, without the benefit of broader government support - an achievement with new possibilities and new dangers.

People have paid for the privilege of reaching orbit before - seven of them, in fact. Musk's passengers will be going farther, slingshotting around the Moon, and they won't be tagging along on an existing mission, either.

Of course, Elon Musk didn't invent space tourism, and he isn't proposing anything that's beyond its …

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What we can learn about SpaceX’s trip to the Moon from the Apollo 8 mission

2017-02-28T11:04:49-05:00

SpaceX's surprise announcement yesterday that it would send two private citizens around the Moon next year may mark a huge milestone: the private space industry's version of the Apollo 8. That mission was a precursor to more advanced lunar exploration for NASA, and paved the way for the first lunar landing. The lessons of Apollo 8 may give us hints of what's next for SpaceX's Moon ambitions.

The Apollo 8 mission helped NASA prepare for landing on the Moon. SpaceX will face some similar challenges on its lunar mission. Like Apollo 8, Elon Musk's customers won't be able to return to Earth in the event that something goes wrong; they'll be on …

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The millionaire tourists on SpaceX’s Moon trip better document the whole thing

2017-02-27T17:54:51-05:00

It's a shame that we haven't been to the Moon in more than 40 years, because the photos and videos from those trips gave humans an incredible perspective on existence. The imagery that the Apollo 8 astronauts captured of the Earth "rising" over the Moon showed our planet for what it truly is: just a ball of rock and water that's suspended in a void.

Now that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has announced that two tourists are paying his company for a new trip around the Moon, all I can think of are all the ways I want these two mystery millionaires to document the trip. I'm not talking reality show style - I just want the raw imagery. Here are just a f …

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Why on earth would you pay millions of dollars to fly around the Moon?

2017-02-27T17:39:52-05:00

SpaceX announced today that it will be sending two (currently) anonymous citizens to orbit the Moon sometime in 2018. While there's obviously many logistical, technical, and scientific questions that will undoubtedly be asked in the coming days about this venture, we're going to try and answer perhaps the biggest one: why?

Going to the moon is really, really expensive

As JFK famously said in 1962, "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Going to the Moon in this decade though, is also really, really expensive. For reference, a seat on a trip to the ISS costs …

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