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Two people who know one another approached the company about sending them on a weeklong flight just beyond the moon, according to Musk. He won't identify the pair or the price tag. They've already paid a "significant" deposit, he noted.
Mr Musk said SpaceX is on track to launch astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA in mid-2018. This moon mission would follow about six months later, by the end of the year under the current schedule, using a Dragon crew capsule and a Falcon heavy rocket.
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| Tech billionaire Elon Musk — the company's founder |
The moon mission is designed to be autonomous — unless something goes wrong, Mr Musk said.
"I think they are entering this with their eyes open, knowing that there is some risk here," Mr Musk told reporters in a telephone news conference, a day after teasing via Twitter that an announcement of some sort was forthcoming.
"They're certainly not naive, and we'll do everything we can to minimise that risk, but it's not zero. But they're coming into this with their eyes open," said Mr Musk, adding that the pair will receive "extensive" training before the flight.
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| Source: SpaceX |
Mr Musk said he does not have permission to release the passengers' names, and he was hesitant to even say if they were men, women or even pilots. He would only admit, "It's nobody from Hollywood."
The passengers would make a long loop around the moon, skimming the lunar surface and then going well beyond, perhaps 300,000 or 400,000 miles distance altogether. The mission won't involve a lunar landing, according to Mr Musk.
It's about 240,000 miles to the moon alone, one way.
