SpaceX has announced a new plan to launch a tourist around the Moon.
The trip would use the company’s Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), a massive launch vehicle that is being designed to carry people into deep space.
‘SpaceX has signed the world’s first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle – an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling to space,’ the company said on Twitter.
SpaceX gave no further details, but said more information would follow on Monday.
Billionaire entrepreneur and founder of SpaceX Elon Musk, pictured in September 2017 speaking below a computer generated illustration of his Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), says he wants to enable space travel for ‘everyday people’
This is not the first time the California-based company, headed by controversial Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has touted plans to send tourists around the moon.
In February, 2017, SpaceX announced it would send the world’s first two space tourists around the Moon in late 2018.
That plan called for them to ride on a Dragon crew vehicle, similar to the cargo ships that SpaceX routinely sends loaded with supplies to the International Space Station.
They would have blasted off aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket.
However, the company has remained mum about those plans in recent months.
The names and identities of those two tourists — and how much they intended to pay — were never revealed.
SpaceX declined a request for more details, but said further information would follow Monday at an event lasting from 5:30pm to 7:00pm ET (01:30 to 02:00 BST).
Humans have not set foot on the Moon since the final Apollo mission in 1972, capping an era of US national pride.
WHAT IS SPACEX’S BFR?
The BFR (Big F***ing Rocket) will complete all missions for SpaceX and is smaller than the ones Musk announced in 2016.
Elon Musk, the SpaceX CEO, said the rocket would take its first trip to the red planet in 2022, carrying only cargo, followed by a manned mission in 2024 and claimed other SpaceX’s products would be ‘cannibalised’ to pay for it.
The enormous rocket has a fuel tank that can hold 1,200 tons of liquid oxygen.
At nearly 348 feet (106 metres) tall, the BFR is a truly gigantic spaceship, towering over the 229-feet-tall (70 metres) Falcon Heavy rocket.
The spaceship will take off and land vertically, powered by 37 ‘raptor’ engines, to produce a liftoff thrust of 5,400 tons, lifting a total mass of 4,400 tons.
Musk first revealed his plans for a future moon base back in September. The top part of the BFR rocket has 40 cabins, which could hold 5 or 6 people.
At the start of April, Musk shared an image to Instagram showing the ‘main body tool’ which is used to build the rocket’s fuselage, or upper stage.
The rocket would be partially reusable and capable of flight directly from Earth to Mars.
Once built, Musk believes the rocket could be used for travel on Earth – saying that passengers would be able to get anywhere in under an hour.
The BFR (Big F***ing Rocket) will complete all missions for SpaceX and is smaller than the ones Musk announced in 2016. Pictured next to a Model 3 saloon, the picture posted by Musk shows the main body tool’ which is used to build the rocket’s fuselage
American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to explore the lunar surface in 1969, a moment seen and heard around the world when Armstrong declared ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’
Only 24 people in history have ever been to the Moon.
US President Donald Trump has championed plans to put boots on the Moon again, as NASA works on building a lunar gateway that would serve as a launching point for missions heading even further into deep space, such as asteroids or Mars.
SpaceX is a key commercial partner to NASA, and is working on a crew ship that will make its first flight to the orbiting International Space Station next year, restoring access to space from US soil for the first time since 2011, when the space shuttle program was retired after 30 years.
Boeing is also hard at work on its crew vehicle, with pioneering flights planned for 2019 as well.
SpaceX currently has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to supply the astronauts living at the ISS, via regular cargo trips on its Dragon spaceship, launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
The BFR is SpaceX’s newest rocket, a super powerful launch vehicle with 31 engines and the capacity to lift 150 tons into space.
During a speech in Australia last year, Musk said he was hopeful that the BFR would be able to launch and land at last two cargo ships on Mars by 2022.
‘I feel fairly confident that we can complete the ship and launch in about five years,’ Musk said.