From Pretoria to the moon

If all goes as planned, two tourists will crawl into a space capsule at the end of next year and blast off for a week-long trip to the moon and back. Its the ultimate couple’s vacation, offered exclusively by Pretoria-born Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which announced the venture last week.

It may also serve as the starting gun for a very different space race.

Unlike during the Cold War, the competition this time around isn’t between countries – it’s between startup companies like SpaceX and government space agencies.

The immediate prize is the moon. But longer-term, victory will go to whoever speeds up the pace of exploration while driving down the costs.

Since Americans last visited the moon in 1972, Nasa’s human exploration programme has been hindered by poor planning and shifting priorities.

Developing rockets costs more than $3 billion a year and the next Nasa mission is only due in 2021.

SpaceX works faster and cheaper and that’s one reason it seems so confident about lapping Nasa. Its lunar tour will launch atop a Falcon Heavy rocket. Its Dragon 2 capsule, designed for humans, will be launched twice this year.

And the price is right: development of the Falcon 9 cost just $390 million, compared with the $1.7 billion to $4 billion that Nasa would’ve spent on the same project, as one study found. – Bloomberg