HAWTHORNE, California – US tech company SpaceX has announced a new plan to launch a tourist around the Moon using its 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.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1041880316657336320
Yesterday, the company revealed that Japan’s billionaire entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa will become the first private passenger to fly around the moon. He will also be the first person to go to the moon since the US Apollo missions ended in 1972.
“Finally, I can tell you that I choose to go to the Moon! I choose to go to the moon with artists!” Maezawa, who founded Japan’s largest online fashion retailer Zozotown, told media, after being introduced by SpaceX boss Elon Musk at the company’s headquarters in California.
https://twitter.com/yousuck2020/status/1041868256464654336
Maezawa is also a major art collector and will invite six to eight artists from a variety of fields on the week-long trip to inspire future works of art.
“These artists will be asked to create something after they return to Earth, and these masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us,” Maezawa further said, adding: “What if Picasso had gone to the Moon? Or Andy Warhol or Michael Jackson or John Lennon?” he asked at the event. “What about Coco Chanel? These are all artists that I adore.”
The mission, which will happen in 2023, at the earliest, will last for around six days.
Elon Musk , CEO of SpaceX, declined to reveal how much Maezawa had paid for the trip.
Musk did however say that Maezawa had made a downpayment which will “have a material effect on paying for cost and development of BFR”.
https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/viral/two-paying-passengers-to-make-first-tourist-trip-around-the-moon-in-2018/
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.
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.
