SpaceX, the ever innovating rocket company, is planing on sending two people on an Apollo 8 style flyby mission to our moon. Apollo 8 is where the iconic Earth Rise picture is from, and is the inspiration for many environmental movements. The images Apollo 8 brought back let us see ourselves as a blue marble floating in the black sea of space, something no other human in history had experienced. That’s no small feat.
Fly me to the moon … Okhttps://t.co/6QT8m5SHwn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 27, 2017
Two people have placed a significant deposit to be flown around the moon. Only a short 70 years ago, this was something only National super powers could do. The revelation that private citizens are paying their way to a moon trip in 2019 is amazing. With the social media connectivity that we have now, this event will no doubt be just as culturally moving as the Apollo missions. Their Instagram account is going to have so many followers…
My guess is that Dennis Tito is behind this. He had plans to do a Mars flyby in 2018 but that never materialized. The mission will use the Dragon 2, a crew capsule that will be used to send astronauts to the ISS. The Dragon 2 is also testing systems for the larger Red Dragon that is being developed for crewed Mars missions. A flyby of the moon is a great way to test the life support systems of the Red Dragon and gain valuable data.
Better still if someone is paying for a part of it.