SpaceX Says It Signed First Private Passenger To the Moon (nbcnewyork.com)

SpaceX announced Thursday that it's booked the world's first private passenger to the moon. The private aerospace company said on Twitter the unnamed traveler would board its Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) to the moon, where only 24 people have ever traveled. Only 12 of those people actually walked on the moon. NBC New York reports: SpaceX didn't reveal any details about the potentially historic voyage but said it plans to reveal the traveler's identity and more on Monday, Sept. 17. The company called the plan "an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling to space." Musk shared the announcement on his personal page but remained tight-lipped as well. However, when asked if the passenger was him, Musk responded with an emoji of the Japanese flag.

Comments

right

[matushorvath]

Do we still take what Musk says seriously? I mean, how many times has he said something will happen at some time, and how many times has he actually followed on? For example, just last month he said he said he's taking Tesla private. Or the manned space flight, he has been saying "in two years" for past ten years. Or the Falcon Heavy test flight slipping multiple times, or the other flights of FH that were supposed to happen this year.

Don't get me wrong, he is doing amazing stuff, and I understand there are objective reasons for the deadline slips, and I am a big fan and wish him success. But it has come to the point where I will wait until he actually delivers something before getting excited. And I will definitely get excited when the Moon flight happens.

(How are we on criticizing Musk here? Am I good? Am I going to get crucified? Stay tuned to find out.)

Re: right

[Megol]

Musk... Invented... Paypal...

It's hard to enumerate in how many ways that's inaccurate.

Re:right

[Kjella]

Do we still take what Musk says seriously? I mean, how many times has he said something will happen at some time, and how many times has he actually followed on?

The flip side of that is how often has he actually been forced to give up? Like not on a particular timeline or event or scaling it back but abandon it altogether? Tesla is churning out cars. SpaceX is building rockets. Landing has gone from highly experimental to routine in a few years. We'll see if the F9 block 5 is really as reusable as they say or if that's more aspirational too, but it's probably more reusable than the block 4. The Falcon Heavy flew... eventually and nailed 2/3rds of the landing on the first try.

We know Musk wants to put people in space. We know Musk wants to go to Mars. As long as he's in charge at SpaceX they're developing the Raptor methalox engine. They are developing the BFR/BFS. They are pursuing manned flight through the Commercial Crew program. They're making space suits. He's not some loon building a rocket in his back yard, they got engineers capable of doing it. Doing 20 satellite launches at $60 million a year is a billion dollar revenue stream, so they got money too.

I'm pretty sure that if you'd like to book a Moon trip then Musk is the right person to go to and that he'll eventually deliver. In that sense getting in first in line might be a good idea no matter when the doors open. Musk wants an Apollo program, how can we get to Mars in less than a decade not a plan that takes 20-30 years. I don't think he can pull that off without Apollo-level funding too, but then again sometimes it brings out the "they said it was impossible so we did it" in engineers.