SpaceX will send tourists flying around the moon before Russia

Recently, the Russian RSC Energia talked abouttheir ambitious plans to organize from 2021-2022, the flights of tourists around the moon. But the American company SpaceX does not intend to lag behind; on the contrary, it plans to circumvent us in this direction after its own plans to conquer Mars have shifted to 2020. Elon Musk, the owner of the aerospace organization, told about sending two space passengers to the natural satellite of the Earth in the next year. Tourists are familiar with each other, but the SpaceX founder chose to hide their names for now.

& times

Before significant event solventClients will pass a series of tests and mandatory training, but they will not have to learn how to operate a spacecraft - the flight will be carried out automatically. As part of the mission, tourists will spend about a week in open space. They fly around the moon, go a little further into deep space, and then return to Earth. The length of the entire path will be about 500-600 thousand km, which is ten times less than to Mars.

Space capsule Crew Dragon with commercialpassengers on board will put into orbit a heavy Falcon Heavy rocket. The launch will take place from the Kennedy launch site at Cape Canaveral. Note that at the moment, the mentioned launch vehicle and the ship have never demonstrated their capabilities (both spacecraft are part of the NASA astronauts delivery program to the ISS), and therefore the statement by Elon Max, at least in time for the mission, may be premature . Meanwhile, the first two tourists, who are to fly around the moon, have already made an advance payment for their future trip. As Musk stressed, the flight is more expensive than the SpaceX mission to deliver cargo to the ISS, but it will not be the only one.

Source: newatlas.com