SpaceX to name its first moon traveler
Musk will make announcement on Monday
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and 22 other Americans have been to the moon.
On Monday, we’ll find out who SpaceX intends to make lunar visitor No. 25.
SpaceX, the other major company run by Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, said late Thursday it has signed up the world’s first private passenger to fly around the moon, and it will make that person’s identity public Monday at 6 p.m. PDT. SpaceX made the announcement on its own website, but also in a manner very familiar to Musk, via Twitter.
“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. Find out who’s flying and why on Monday,
September 17.” SpaceX tweeted.
The BFR, which officially stands for Big Falcon Rocket—or, as it is jokingly referred to, Big (expletive) Rocket—is a Saturn 5 Class reusable rocket about which little is known, aside from the fact that it is big. Musk has also touted it as a central part of his plan for humans to eventually travel to Mars.
In addition to naming SpaceX’s first passenger to the moon, Musk is expected to give more details about the time frame for the eventual, nearly 500,000-mile round trip to the moon and back.
If the voyage comes to pass, it will be the first time any humans have been to the moon since Gene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt flew to the moon on Apollo 17 in December 1972.