SpaceX plans to announce two new space tourists who will fly on the Starship rocket: Dennis Tito, the world’s first-ever space tourist in 2001, and his wife, Akiko.
The pair paid an undisclosed amount to fly Starship around the moon once the vehicle is ready. They will travel along with 10 other unnamed passengers on a journey of approximately one week. The trip does not include a landing on the lunar surface and it is unclear if the other passengers have already been chosen.
It may take a while for the mission to start and there is still no target date. It is slated to be Starship’s fourth passenger mission, conducted after SpaceX used the vehicle to land astronauts on the moon for NASA and after travel by other customers who purchased rides on the ship.
Then there’s the fact that Starship has yet to travel to space. SpaceX has yet to send an unmanned version of the vehicle to Earth orbit, which could happen as early as November, according to CEO Elon Musk. The company also needs to demonstrate that it can refuel Starship while in space so that it can reach the vicinity of the moon, and it will need the necessary life support systems and other hardware to keep people alive.
“I know this missile will be tested back and forth; there will be hundreds of flights before we fly,” Tito said in an interview with Bloomberg. “Next year we will not fly. It remains to be seen.”
After a brief stint as a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Tito co-founded investment management firm Wilshire Associates in 1972. He was the first civilian space tourist to visit the International Space Station, paying $20 million (almost Rs. 1,64,500 crore) to buy a seat on Russia’s Soyuz rocket for a week-long stay. Tito said NASA was not happy with his trip at the time.
Since its flight, space tourism has expanded enormously and NASA has opened the ISS to more commercial endeavors. Nearly a dozen tourists have flown there with the help of a company called Space Adventures. The first all-civilian crew visited the space station in April, coordinated by a company called Axiom.
Paying customers can also get a brief taste of space by purchasing tickets for suborbital vehicles from companies like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, which send passengers to the edge of space and back.
SpaceX has also entered the space tourism market. In 2021, an all-civilian crew, sponsored by billionaire Jared Isaacman, flew for three days in orbit on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, a mission called Inspiration4.
‘To the moon’
Tito’s plans came about when he visited SpaceX in June 2021 after a friend of his wife arranged a meeting with company staff. He was asked if he wanted to go to space one more time, either to visit the space station or take a quick trip to orbit.
“No, I want to go to the moon,” Tito recalls saying. “And then I looked at Akiko when I said that, and she said ‘me too’. And that’s how it started.”
Dennis Tito is 82 years old, which could make him the oldest person to go into orbit and deep space. He acknowledged that he was focused on staying fit while waiting for Starship to develop. He and his wife, who is 57, are both pilots, while Dennis says he has four U.S. weightlifting records for an 80-year-old.
“What will be, will be. It will take a while, but it will be ready, and it will be safe when it’s done,” Tito said. “It’s more limited by how much time I have on this planet.”
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