WOR D S D OMINIC B L IS S


F LY ME TO THE


and returning to Earth. Presumably they’ve both remembered to reserve a window seat. This very ambitious mission is being


L 30


staged by a Californian spacef light company called SpaceX. Founded by Elon Musk – he of Tesla and PayPal fame – SpaceX won’t yet reveal very much about the mission, not even the two astronauts’ names; only that they will be launching on a 70-metre-high Falcon Heavy rocket, and then circumnavigating the Moon in a much smaller autonomous Dragon 2 spacecraft. “This would be a long loop around the


Moon,” Musk revealed. “It would skim its surface, go quite a bit further into deep space and then loop back to Earth. So I’m guessing, distance-wise, maybe 300,000 or 400,000 miles.” The flight is expected to last a week; the price, undisclosed. Much shorter and less ambitious are


the spaceflights currently planned by British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s spaceflight company Virgin Galactic. For a US$250,000 (return) ticket, ordinary punters will get a trip aboard SpaceShipTwo, a reusable, rocket-powered winged spacecraft with capacity for two pilots and six passengers. The amateur astronauts will fly into space, 60-plus miles (100km) above the Earth’s atmosphere, where they will “experience a thrilling, dynamic rocket ride; true unencumbered weightlessness; and the best possible view of Earth and the blackness of space”. Virgin Galactic wouldn’t commit to a


precise launch date for the first commercial flight, but its commercial director Stephen Attenborough did tell Business Traveller: “It’s on the horizon but one can never be


AP RIL 2 0 18 bus ine s s tr a v el ler .c om …and beyond. Spaceflight


companies are already taking bookings for trips into Earth’s orbit and even around the Moon.


Suddenly, a two-week holiday in the Caribbean looks very dull indeed


ater this year, if all goes to plan, two very wealthy amateur astronauts will lift off in a rocket from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A – the same launchpad used by the Apollo missions back in the 1970s – before looping around the Moon


MO ON


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