It will be during the second half of 2018 , according to the plan announced by the American space company SpaceX, when the first two tourists travel to the Moon. The idea of this first journey is that these two people can see from very, very close the only natural satellite of our planet, since they will orbit around, almost touching the lunar surface, although they will not be able to take a walk through it, since the mission he does not contemplate the ship landing.
These two private citizens will travel in one of the Dragon 2 capsules, launched on the Falcon Heavy rocket of the North American company. The journey will last a week and will be remotely controlled , although travelers will have to go through prior training in case some kind of emergency occurs during the flight.
According to the billionaire creator and CEO of SpaceX, the South African Elon Musk, these two privileged tourists have already paid for their space vacations “a significant deposit”. They will be the first humans, in the last 45 years, to travel to the Moon – man set foot on the satellite for the last time in 1972 -. According to Musk, “they will travel faster and further in the Solar System than anyone before.” When the time comes, both the ship and the two passengers will undergo extensive testing.
The identity of these two tourists has not been released, although the South African businessman assured that they are not a Hollywood personality. Apart from circling the Earth’s satellite, passing very close to its surface , these lucky strangers will actually arrive, and if all goes well, beyond their orbit, within an initiative in which the collaboration of NASA has been essential.
“Just as the Apollo astronauts did before them, these individuals will travel into space and carry with them the hopes and dreams of all humanity, fueled by the universal human spirit of exploration, ” explained SpaceX.
A millionaire payment
It is not known how much these two space tourists are going to pay, since it is a fact that this private North American company has not revealed, but perhaps we can get an idea by knowing what others have previously disbursed for trips of the style. Thus, the American tycoon Dennis Tito fulfilled his dream of always traveling to space, back in 2001 , and he did it aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, and was destined for the Station International Space (ISS).
He became the first space tourist in history and the second oldest person to travel to space – he was sixty years old at the time. For the ten days he spent in space, he paid approximately $ 20 million (which today represents about 17 million euros) to the Russian Federal Space Agency, according to sources close to this former NASA engineer who later accumulated a fortune with an investment company and pension funds.
Dennis Tito was the first, but not the last, to make his dream come true and become a space tourist. Other millionaires who followed in her footsteps were the South African computer scientist and businessman Mark Shuttleworth, in 2002, or the Iranian-American millionaire Anousheh Ansari – the first female tourist to travel to space – in 2006, among others.
Image: SpaceX
