SpaceX Plans To Send Two People Around the Moon In 2018 (gizmodo.com)

Today, SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced that in 2018, the company will fly two private citizens around the Moon in its Dragon 2 spacecraft, carried by its Falcon Heavy rocket. "While the voyagers' names have not been disclosed, according to SpaceX, a 'significant deposit' has already been made," Gizmodo reports. From the report: According to Musk, the mission will last approximately one week. The passengers will travel beyond the moon and loop back to Earth, spanning roughly 300,000 to 400,000 miles. While the passengers will undergo some sort of training beforehand, it's unclear if the two have any experience with piloting, nevermind spaceflight. The mission, although unrelated to NASA's plan to slingshot astronauts around the Moon in several years' time using the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, was made possible in part by funding SpaceX has received to develop its human spaceflight technology through the commercial crew program. "This is a really thing that's happened," Elon Musk told reporters at a press conference. "We've been approached to do a crewed mission beyond the Moon ... [and these passengers] are very serious about it. We plan to do that probably Dragon 2 spacecraft with the Falcon Heavy rocket." He went on to say the company is "expected to do more than one mission of this nature."

Comments

we can't even be bothered to get that right....

[argStyopa]

"The passengers will travel beyond the moon and loop back to Earth, spanning roughly 300,000 to 400,000 miles. "

The distance to the moon is 238,900 miles.
I'm going to go way out on a limb here and postulate that a trip AROUND the moon is going to be something more than 477,000 miles.

Re:Whadda think, Bruce Perens?

[Megane]

But it wasn't Elon's idea to go to the Moon, it was one or both of the mystery passengers. SpaceX isn't just his pie-in-the-sky road to Mars, it's also a company that sells rocket launches to paying customers.

Re: All in the timing

[slashdot_commentator]

He/she could be a non-native looking forward to a prosperous life in the USA. Or he/she could be a victim of two enterprising (illegal) immigrants, and be forced to exiled from the land he/she was raised since a toddler, to a poverty stricken place where he/she can't even speak the language. Or even a legal immigrant who came here thinking Americans would come to eventually accept them and their children, but instead had Trump provide encouragement and legal indifference for another generation (20 years) of racist xenophobia against them. Either way, they're justified in hating Trump's guts.

You're the fucking moron. And a fucking Anonymous Coward to boot.