{"id":40676,"date":"2023-10-20T15:09:21","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/two-private-citizens-confirmed-for-elon-musks-moon-mission-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:09:21","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:09:21","slug":"two-private-citizens-confirmed-for-elon-musks-moon-mission-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/two-private-citizens-confirmed-for-elon-musks-moon-mission-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Two “private citizens” confirmed for Elon Musk’s moon mission – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tesla's<\/div>\n

Elon Musk\u2019s private space exploration company SpaceX has unveiled plans to send two \u201cprivate citizens\u201d to the moon in late 2018, which would mark the first moon voyage since Apollo 17 in 1972.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no details yet about who the two cosmonauts will be, but it\u2019s likely they\u2019ve got cash to spend. In its announcement<\/a>, SpaceX said the two travellers had already paid a \u201csignificant deposit\u201d to do a moon mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration,\u201d SpaceX said.<\/p>\n

This is the next step in Musk\u2019s ambitious goal of landing people on Mars, which the entrepreneur outlined last year. But Musk doesn\u2019t want to just land a few humans there, he wants to build a civilisation, reports Wired.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI really think there are two fundamental paths [for humans]: One path is we stay on Earth forever, and some eventual extinction event wipes us out,\u201d Musk said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to say that\u2019s when this will occur. This is a huge amount of risk, will cost a lot, and there\u2019s a good chance we won\u2019t succeed. But we\u2019re going to try and do our best.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two citizens heading to the moon will do so in SpaceX\u2019s Dragon spacecraft, with a new version called the Crew Dragon being developed with help from NASA.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s likely these two won\u2019t be the only ones, as \u201cother flight teams have also expressed strong interest and we expect more to follow\u201d, says SpaceX.<\/p>\n

Venturing into space would no doubt require conquering fears \u2014\u00a0a topic Musk has spoken on extensively in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are just times when something is important enough that you believe in it enough that you do it in spite of fear,\u201d Musk told Y Combinator last year.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople shouldn\u2019t think, \u2018well I feel fear about this and therefore I shouldn\u2019t do it\u2019. It\u2019s normal to feel fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conquering his fears was a key part of launching SpaceX in the first place, said Musk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen starting SpaceX I thought the odds of success were less than 10%, and I just accepted that actually, probably, I would just lose everything but that I would maybe make some progress,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on SmartCompany<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em>\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>\u00a0and iTunes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk\u2019s private space exploration company SpaceX has unveiled plans to send two \u201cprivate citizens\u201d to the moon in late<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}