It was a surprising announcement: SpaceX, a private company, said it will fly two people to the moon next year. This has not been attempted since NASA’s Apollo moon landings about 45 years ago. The news came from SpaceX founder and chief executive officer, Elon Musk. He is a billionaire who made his money from technology. In a news conference, he said two people have already paid SpaceX a “significant” amount of money to send them on a weeklong flight just beyond the moon and back. No one has been to the moon since 1972. NASA flew 24 astronauts around it, and twelve Americans walked on its surface beginning in 1969. Elon Musk’s plan is “a bold challenge” says Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF). The group has more than 70 members in the spaceflight business, including Musk’s SpaceX. Stallmer says Musk’s work in the last ten years is “incredibly impressive.” He started SpaceX with his money, and now has large contracts with NASA and the U.S. defense department. And he is building reusable rockets. But Musk is not alone in the business race into space. Blue Origin, owned by Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, is also developing reusable rockets. Using them will bring down the cost of going into space. Last September, Bezos announced a new “heavy-lift” rocketone that will be able to deliver people and supplies to low-Earth orbit and farther, too. Other companies, like Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, are building space airplanes to take passengers for a ride up into space and back 62,000 miles above Earth. Other companies are developing and building many products for spaceflight, like rockets, and housing for humans traveling and working in space.
