SpaceX moon travel: All you need to know

SpaceX plans tolaunch two paying passengers on a tourist trip around the moon next year usinga spaceship under development for NASA astronauts and a heavy-lift rocket yetto be flown, the launch company announced on Monday.

• The launch of the first privately funded tourist flightbeyond the orbit of the International Space Station is tentatively targeted forlate 2018, Space Exploration Technologies Chief Executive Elon Musk told reporterson a conference call.
• Musk declined to identify the customers or say how much theywould pay to fly on the weeklong mission, except to say that it is "nobodyfrom Hollywood."
• He also said the two prospective space tourists, who knoweach other, have put down a "substantial" deposit and would undergo"extensive training before going on the mission."
• "I think there's a market for one or two of these peryear," he said, estimating that space tourist fares charged by SpaceXcould eventually contribute 10 to 20 percent of the company's revenue.
• Plans call for SpaceX's two-person lunar venture to fly some300,000 to 400,000 miles (480,000 to 640,000 km) from Earth past the moonbefore Earth's gravity pulls the spacecraft back into the atmosphere for aparachute landing.
• That trajectory would be similar to NASA's 1968 Apollo 8 missionbeyond the moon and back. Musk also said that if NASA decides it wants to be first inline for a lunar flyby mission, the U.S. space agency would take priority.
• At the behest of the Trump administration, NASA is conductinga study to assess safety risks, costs and potential benefits of lettingastronauts fly on the debut test flight of its heavy-lift Space Launch Systemrocket and Orion capsule. That mission is currently planned to be uncrewed andscheduled to launch in late 2018.
• Musk said the privately funded moon expedition would takeplace after his California-based company begins flying crew to theInternational Space Station for the National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration. NASA is hoping those crew-ferrying flights begin by late2018.
• SpaceX's own Falcon Heavy rocket, which Musk wants to usefor the lunar tourist mission, is scheduled to make a debut test flight laterthis year.
• Musk, also CEO of electric carmaker Tesla, said missionsaround the moon could provide practice for eventual human flights to Mars, thelong-term goal of SpaceX. Except for needed communications upgrades, the Dragonspaceship in development for NASA astronauts is well suited for lunar flybymissions, Musk added.
• Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Richard Branson'sLondon-based Virgin Group, is testing a six-passenger, two-pilot spaceship tocarry paying customers about 62 miles (100 km) above Earth, high enough toexperience brief microgravity and see Earth's curvature against the blacknessof space. Tickets to ride cost $250,000 each.
• SpaceX has a $10 billion backlog of about 70 missions forNASA and commercial customers. The firm's backers include Alphabet's Google Incand Fidelity Investments, which together have contributed $1 billion to Musk'sfirm.