SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies, is a rocket company headed by CEO Elon Musk. Elon Musk is also the CEO of the successful electric car manufacturer, Tesla. On Mon. Feb. 27, SpaceX announced their plans to send tourists around the moon and back to earth. Two private individuals approached the company about taking a weeklong trip. If the trip is successful, the passengers would be the first humans to venture that far into space in more than 40 years. “This would do a long loop around the moon,” Musk said. He also spoke about plans for the mission to be launched in late 2018. The two individuals would spend about a week inside one of SpaceX’s Dragon 2 capsules. The capsule will be launched on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. Although the capsule will be automated, the passengers will go through training incase of any possible emergencies occur. A price tag on the cruise is unclear according to Musk., but the Falcon Heavy itself has a list price of $90 million.

Some are raising question to the realistic date of 2018. The Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy are years behind schedule and have yet to fly. Dr. Mary Dittmar, Executive Director of Coalition for Deep Space, added, “I find it extraordinary that these sorts of announcements are being made when SpaceX has yet to get crew from the ground to low-Earth orbit.”
The only thing similar to this trip would be the seven space tourists who paid tens of millions of dollars to fly on Russian Soyuz rockets to visit the International Space Station, which is about 200 miles above the Earth’s surface. This trip by SpaceX would be much more distant. The moon is about a quarter million miles away, and the trajectory would take the capsule around 300,000 to 400,000 miles from Earth.