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In recent years, SpaceX has become a leading player in the field of spaceflight. The company has mastered the art of reusability and launched satellites for private and public customers. However, these launches are only part of a much larger mission, which would lead to Moon and Mars.
When Elon Musk, who also owns the electric car company Tesla, founded SpaceX in 2002, his primary goal was to colonize the red planet and make humans a multi-planetary species. To achieve this goal, the company launched its Falcon rocket and Dragon spacecraft, and began launching space launches, while enhancing the appearance of reusability. Now all this effort is used to develop a gigantic spaceship combo for Martian flights.
The spaceship, which was announced last year and officially bears the name of Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), will transport a crew of human beings to the red planet around 2024. will also be used to fly a passenger private on a round trip to Moon.
On September 13, SpaceX announced on Twitter that a private passenger had committed to fly over the Moon on BFR, which is still in the development phase. The company did not reveal when this "lunar mission" would occur, but gave a date at which the exact details of the mission, including the passenger's name, will likely be unveiled – Sept. 17.
As soon as SpaceX announced the news, many wondered if Musk himself would fly on the Moon mission. The billionaire did not give an exact answer to this question but tweeted the flag of Japan in response to one of the users, indicating that the passenger could come from the country. He even said that the rendering of BFR presented in SpaceX's tweet is the last representation of what the vehicle.
That said, no matter who flies on a mission, a trip to the moon would be definitely epic. In fact, it would be the first satellite since the last Apollo flight, where astronauts Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt and Ron Evans went into lunar orbit.
"Only 24 humans have been on the moon in history," SpaceX said in another Tweet. "No one has visited since the last Apollo mission in 1972."
The Moon flying project was first launched by SpaceX in 2017, when the company announced that a two-man crew would be sent to the moon with its Falcon Heavy ship and Crew Dragon ship. The flight was scheduled for the end of 2018, but was apparently canceled in favor of the WCR.
"We're sort of debating about doing that on Falcon Heavy or BFR," Musk told The Verge before Falcon Heavy's first flight in February. "It will depend in some way on the quality of the development of BFR depending on whether we focus on the BFR for human flight in deep space or on Falcon Heavy."
The passenger performing the BFR Moon mission could be one of the first two passengers of the Falcon Heavy flight, but this remains to be confirmed. The September 17th event will begin at 9 pm EDT and SpaceX have already set up a live stream for this.
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