Is SpaceX ready to take on risks of taking customers to moon?

If you were a billionaire, how much would you pay for a trip around the moon?

Presumably, that’s what Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX — the corporation that has performed several resupply missions to the International Space Station — is asking himself.

SpaceX recently announced that it has two customers who already have put down deposits for a future trip around the moon. This, in spite of the fact that SpaceX has not yet ferried any astronauts safely to the Space Station, as expected to happen soon, based on a 2014 contract signed with NASA.

The most recent time that humans went past low-Earth orbit was the final mission of the Apollo program in 1972. Think of the opportunity to be the first humans in more than 45 years to look down at the moon’s surface.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Unless, of course, you know the risks.

Even NASA, with its strict emphasis on safety, has a spotty record. The Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident estimates the probability of “failure with loss of vehicle and human life” on each mission to be about 1 percent.

Has anyone watched the movie “Apollo 13” recently? The real Apollo 13 astronauts barely made it back alive, and if they hadn’t, the risk estimate could be even higher.

Even though a success rate of 99 percent might sound good, that’s NASA’s record. There are no statistics for the risk of flying with SpaceX.

What we do know is that on June 28, 2015, an unmanned SpaceX rocket, loaded with a resupply mission to the Space Stattion, exploded shortly after launch. In 2016, the company lost another rocket on the launch pad while it was taking on fuel. There were other failures before 2010, but let’s write that off as growing pains.

Estimates of the cost of each launch of SpaceX’s Falcon rocket is about $90 million. Presumably, a mission to the moon would be more costly. Let’s assume that it would cost at least $200 million for such a trip. That’s about $100 million per seat for a deluxe two-person fly-by mission.

Even if you have a billion dollars, the cost of a moonviewing vacation is still a significant cost. Add to that the risk factor of perhaps a 1 percent chance of death.

I marvel that anyone would pay that for a close-up view of the moon.

It’s different for astronauts. They understand the risks and are still willing to do this because space missions improve our knowledge of science. It’s not the same as a tourist trip.

I’m not a business person, but I wonder if it’s too soon for SpaceX to take paying customers on space trips. So far, SpaceX has done a good business with NASA, signing two contracts that total $4.2 billion.

Imagine what could happen if, God forbid, SpaceX had a failure ending in death for the paying customers. Even if the space tourists signed off on the risks, it’s easy to guess that the public would still react negatively and that NASA would have to cancel its contract with SpaceX.

I have heard that successful businesses need to take risks, but does this risk really make sense for SpaceX?

I think it’s great that private businesses now can compete with governments for launching rockets into space. Technology transfer such as this often spurs growth in other areas, too.

Let’s hope that space travel has a bright future. But maybe we should wait until it’s a bit safer.