SpaceX to fly 2 people around the moon in 2018

Space Exploration Technologies plans to launch two paying customers on a tourist trip around the moon next year using a spaceship under development for NASA astronauts and a heavy-lift rocket yet to be flown, chief executive Elon Musk told reporters on Monday.

The launch of the first privately funded tourist flight beyond the orbit of the International Space Station is tentatively targeted for late 2018, Musk told reporters on a conference call.

Musk declined to identify the customers or say how much they would pay to fly on the weeklong mission, except to say that it's"nobody from Hollywood."

Hesaid the two prospective space tourists know each 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 per year,"he said, estimating that space tourist fares charged by SpaceXcould eventually contribute 10 to 20 per cent of the company'srevenue.

"This should be incredibly exciting."

Musk also said that if NASA decides it wants to be first in line for a lunar flyby mission, the U.S. space agency would take priority.

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At the behest of the Trump administration, NASA is conducting a study to assess safety risks, costs and potential benefits of letting astronauts fly on the debut test flight of its heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule.

That mission is currently planned to beun-crewedand scheduled to launch in late 2018.

Musk said the privately funded moon expedition would take place after his California-based company, known asSpaceX, begins flying crew to the International Space Station for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

NASA is hoping those crew-ferrying flights begin by late 2018.

SpaceX'sown Falcon Heavy rocket, which Musk wants to use for his own lunar tourist mission, is scheduled to make a debut test flight later this year.

Plans call forSpaceX'stwo-person lunar venture to fly some 480,000to 643,000 kilometres from Earth past the moon before Earth's gravity pulls the spacecraft back into the atmosphere for a parachute landing.

That trajectory would be similar to NASA's 1968 Apollo 8 mission beyond the moon and back.

Musk, also CEO of electric-car maker Tesla, saidmissions around the moon could provide practice for eventual
human flights to Mars, the long-term goal of SpaceX.

Except for needed communications upgrades, the Dragonspaceship in development for NASA astronauts is well suited forlunar flyby missions, Musk added.

The launch would require licensing by the Federal AviationAdministration.

SpaceX joins a growing list of companies developingcommercial passenger space flight services.

Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Richard Branson's London-based Virgin Group, is testing a six-passenger, two-pilot
spaceship to carry paying customers about 100 kilometresabove Earth, high enough to experience brief microgravity andsee Earth's curvature against the blackness of space.

Tickets to ride cost $250,000 US each.

SpaceX has a $70-billion US backlog of about 70 missions forNASA and commercial customers. The firm's backers includeAlphabet's Google Inc. and Fidelity Investments, which togetherhave contributed $1 billion to Musk's firm.

Space consultant Bill Harwood told CBSNthe costs of mounting a trip like this would be similar to travellingto the International Space Station.