SpaceX Will Announce Their Moon Passenger Next Week
@SpaceX: “SpaceX has signed the world’s first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle–an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling to space. Find out who’s flying and why on Monday, September 17.”
There got to be more than one passenger for something the size of the BFS.
Hopefully not someone named Branson in a flight around the Moon before inaugurating in limited scheduled flights around the Moon as VirginX LLC (obviously an unlikely joint venture between SpaceX and Virgin Galactic).
All the Billionaires can booked their flights of oneupmanship with someone soon.
I predict that it will be priced for millionaires, and that this presentation on Monday is a sales pitch to try and fill it up…if not for the first flight then the ones that follow. BFS (theoretically) seats one hundred to Mars with gear.
Priced for billionaires, I think you mean.
No, I meant priced for millionaires. A person worth more than $5M or so can afford to spend a couple million on a trip to the Moon.
No one is going to build a sustainable industry on it of only a billionaire can afford it. Billionaires are too stingy and there aren’t enough of them.
There are estimated to be 36 million millionaires worldwide according to Credit Suisse AG Bank, a good size market for space adventures like this one, especially if you include family members. They also report that the number of billionaires is around 2,700, still a respectable market compared to the number of astronauts that have flown in space.
If Elon Musk meets his cost target of BFR costing less than the old Falcon I ($10 million/flight) and if a lunar flight only requires two launches (the transport and a tanker) he would only need 20 customers a flight to break even.
So if the luxury spacecraft version of the BFR is able to take 50 paying customers and the rest are crew, serving staff, astronomer tour guides, etc., the price could in theory be as low as $500,000 with a 20% profit margin. Yep, it could be a whole new world of space business 🙂
Who knows, maybe some of the members of the space committee of Congress will charter a flight as a junket to observe first hand the SLS/Orion building the Deep Space Gateway for NASA. Of course since the BFR is so much larger then the Gateway they would not be able to dock with it, but would be able to observe it enroute to Bigelow Aerospace’s B2100 based Lunar Hotel ?
SpaceX would need a better market study than that to convince me. Connecting the dots you provided with a log-log interpolation, I get 64,000 people making over $100 million per year. That’s about where I’d place the market for a fancy vacation: At $2 million per ticket that’s 2% of someone’s income. Twenty per flight, and make a guess that only one percent of the people who can afford it would be interested, and that’s a market for only 32 flights.
Now, you can easily question all of the above assumptions. And it is definitely a continuium (if 1% of the people will pay 2% of their income, 5% might pay 0.5% of their income and 0.5% pay 5% of their income.) But that’s what I mean when I say I’d like to see a real market survey before I’ll be convinced.
By the way, where can I sign up to be one of those “astronomer tour guides?” They probably would exists. There are cruise ships which go to Antarctica, and they do give free trips to glaciologist who work as tour guides.
Yes, it is just a “back of the envelope” calculation, but it shows the numbers could be there if you meet the expectations of the potential consumers for it. The problem is that market research is expensive and a firm that did it is unlikely to share the results. However, Futron did a “bait study” some years ago they published. It was on suborbital and orbital tourism so its applications are limited, but still interesting reading.
http://www.spaceportassocia…
In terms of tour guides, I would just contact SpaceX and see if they are hiring 🙂
But they will probably have billions of investment dollars to recoup. The aspirational target of $10 million per flight is surely based on the marginal cost alone, assuming all goals of turnaround time and flights per vehicle have been met. That’s a long way off, if ever, and still depends on whether the market (for all BFR flights collectively) is big enough to get them there. In short, they won’t be setting ticket prices based on aspirational marginal cost targets any time soon.
Why would he price it cheaper than a Falcon 9 – Dragon 2 flight? Especially when there were people willing to pay 100mil or 50 million to the Russians for 8 days in LEO.
I believe the first couple flights will be for what the market can bear 60 million .. At that price I believe he could sell 1/2 dozen seats .. then like 8 – 12 for 50 million .. I can’t believe he would not get the rockets paid for if possible …
1) He claims that larger rockets cost less per lb to fly.
2) He claims that BFR will be fully reusable.
3) He claims that the rocket will seat 100 people. His pattern is to assert the best case scenario, which is that he will fill every seat…and price to enable that result.
4) The actual claims about the rocket’s capacity is 100 people plus provisions to Mars…a what…3-6 month flight? The Moon loop is 1-2 weeks? So he might try to fill the rest of the capacity with more paying cargo instead of balast.
If all of these claims are close to correct, then $2.5M / seat not an unreasonable uninformed estimate.
Announced that 6 – 8 artists are going with Yusaku Maezawa … It doesn’t sound like it is going to be a million a seat. They are not announcing the price.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Yep! And he bought all 100 seats. And, his down payment was large enough to make a billionaire use the words “very significant” to describe it.
I wondered— when he said that he’d make this announcement — I wondered how he would “muskify” this event.
or instance he sent a car into orbit on FH. How would he make this event stand out- more than it already does, of course? And the answer- send artists! just has so much appeal. It feels satisfying.
Someone worth $5M is very unlikely to blow half of their entire life savings on a single week long trip. Unless they’re dying of cancer or something. You don’t make millions of dollars by acting in that way.
If you want a sustainable, albeit small market, you need to look to billionaires, for whom a couple of million dollars is on the order of their annual ROI from investments.
For example, who had been buying Space Adventures’ trips to the ISS? It was pretty much all billionaires, even though the cost was “only” $20M.
So what happened to the two people that were supposed to fly around the moon this year riding a Falcon Heavy?
https://www.spacex.com/news…
Turns out they didn’t have funding secured, so ended up deciding not doing the private thing
Actually, Musk has given up on man-rating the Falcon Heavy, because it would be faster on the long run just focus on the BFR, instead of spending a lot for a limited stunt as the circunlunar FH/Dragon mission.
Plus it would be a lot more expensive to fly. It has served its purpose of getting folks attention. Now it time to really leap into the future ?
Err… I think that was a joke about Mr. Musk’s statements about taking Tessla private. Announced in a tweet, claimed to have secured a source of funds, the funds weren’t really there, and so he decided on “not doing the private thing.”
Honestly, I like what SpaceX has done, but in the last few months, Mr. Musk is making me wonder about him, personally. Some of those things are eccentric, even by my standards. At times, I almost think he’s aspiring to be the next Howard Hughes.
Yes, the Wall Street Analysts and short-sellers are getting on his nerves and he is trolling them for fun. But I bet it taught him a lesson and SpaceX will never go public as a result.
Yes, but… When it starts a SEC investigation and causes a big but temporary drop in stock value (was it really 9%?), then it strikes me as an expensive way to have fun by yanking someone’s chain. I’m sympathetic to his desire to do so, but acting on it shows a lack of restraint or self-discipline which isn’t a great thing in a CEO (or anyone in a leadership or policy making) position.
Not happening, sadly. One of them has been transferred to the BFS circumlunar mission.
Likely victims of Commercial Crew since it’s clear Elon Musk is moving on from it by switching his focus to the BFR. No point in trying to commercialize a system which will only make a handful of flights before being retired as outdated.
Who wants to share an SUV sized tin can for two weeks? Even better, who wants to develop an expensive capability that is supported to be routine but will only seat 8 people and which still has throwaway components? Furthermore, if they developed a “command module” to make he flight more comfortable it would either be throwaway, or have to be permanently in orbit, vastly complicating things and pushing back the timeline because SpaceX doesn’t (yet) know how to build long-duration habitats.
BFS is roomy, brings everything back, and even though it’s new, it is something that SpaceX already knows how to build and fly.
Plus, it develops and tests Mars technology. No one thought that an Earth reentry capsule was a good ride to Mars.
Best of luck! The sooner the better to start abandonment of the fanciful Orion and lunar orbiter. A BFS could land and take off from the moon without refueling and leave a Bigelow station for temporary occupancy. That might make sense as something that could be achieved quickly without slowing down Mars exploration. Government plans have the feel of failure that has kept man in low earth orbit since 1973.
You can thank your elected Congress for giving you the space system we are building now. I wish NASA was managed like SpaceX, unencumbered by elected officials and their pork and pet projects to keep their constituency fat and happy. We have the space system we voted for.
ya, but that’s not how government works. So long as the Twitter trends focus on sports teams and rap stars, government will be able to continue to do whatever it wants in space. Start putting “ordinary people” on rockets though and all that will change.
And so the race is on! Who will reach deep space first?
NASA with its “spam in the can” old school SLS/Orion recreating the great historical splashdowns of the ancient Apollo era?
Or
SpaceX in the modern spacious commercial BFR with an interior volume greater than an A380, with large cabins and plenty of room for commercial space voyagers to enjoy the flight, followed by a 21st Century style landing at a commercial spaceport?
This will be fun to watch!
If I was SpaceX I would include a steward on the flight to recreate the luxury service provided passengers on the old Imperial Airways flying boats, and in the science fiction stories about spaceliners from that era, to emphasis even more the difference in technology levels.
Time to pop some popcorn and, if SpaceX wins, watch how fast Congress disowns any responsibility for the SLS/Orion ?
We could get into another discussion about definitions, but I think of “deep space” as going beyond Earth orbit. And the Moon and anything orbiting it are in Earth orbit.
Yes, this is still just the local neighborhood. But it’s a start ?
While I agree that lunar orbit shouldn’t be considered “BEO”, I think there’s a reasonable case for “deep space” to include anything beyond the Van Allen belts.
If you’re thinking of the radiation environment, you have a good point, but I’d go a little farther out. You want to be well outside the Earth’s bow shock to be in a truely interplanetary radiation environment. Between the radiation belts and the bow shock, the radiation environment isn’t too harsh. Maybe 20 Earth radii would do, which is beyond geostationary orbit, but still closer than the Moon and still on high Earth orbits.
I’m just worried I’ll be dead before any of this happens. I’ve been waiting since 1969 for something beyond Earth orbit and I’m running out of time!
I know how that is.
1972 was the year of the final Apollo lunar mission.
Am I the only one who thinks that looks like the cover of a Tom Swift book?
You and I might be the only ones who remember Tom Swift books.
I’ve often thought that Elon is the closest thing to Tom Swift – Tesla/SpaceX are “Swift Enterprises”.
I remember the Tom Corbett Space Cadet books.
I only remember the T.V. series! “Space Academy, U.S.A., in the World Beyond Tomorrow, 2350AD!” But, then there was Capt. Video and his Video Rangers, and Commander Buzz Corey of Space Patrol!
Yes, many of the books are available on Archive.Org
https://archive.org/search….[]=mediatype%3A%22texts%22
I remember the title of a Tom Swift book of my youth: “Tom Swift and his Ultrasonic Cycloplane”. Great stuff.
Thank you for the link.
has there been any testing of the full size raptor engine yet?
Last week in Europe SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said they’re building “flight-grade Raptor hardware.”
OK everyone…
Let’s play a little game of “The Price is Right”. We’ll find out on Monday who wins.
I say $2,500,000 per seat.
Come now everyone. Give us a number. Who can come closest to the price that Elon announces on Monday…without going over!
Musk will announce $2,500,000 per seat is ‘secured’. Just don’t put it on auto-pilot.
I’d say $1,000,000 deposit and a 40% discount on the full price of the finial first flight per reseat cost. But you’re right millionaires only
$2,255,300.75 If I win, do I get a seat on the next one? (Probably couldn’t pass the physical, but it would certainly give them another data point after John Glenn’s Shuttle ride for a 76 year old!)
Keith? A prize for the winner? Certainly not a seat of course, but something more…modest?
Why not? A million or so should be in crowd funding range ??
Let’s not get anyone in jail over this. Crowd sourcing a prize for a guessing contest is awfully close to setting up a betting pool. Informally and in most places, that isn’t so bad. But when it’s organized and advertised on an internationally-read internet site? I’d want to check with a lawyer.
Towards the end of the Cassini mission, the scientist did organize a couple of betting pools on final results. But we deliberately kept it internal and informal. JPL probably would have had a fit. Their management once vetoed co-hosting a science conference in Las Vegas because they didn’t like the image.
Yes, the lottery laws would come into effect.
But it also shows that a blogger could in theory get their readers to fund them for such an expedition IF they had enough followers that were interested in them writing about it.
The Moon conferences that were held in Las Vegas used to do very good.
A million a seat ?
I’m going to guess 10 percent of the Soyuz trips, so $3 million.
60 – 80 million a seat. I doubt he will undercut the cost of dragon flight to LEO. He didn’t start selling cheap teslas and I highly doubt he will do that here. Not when a 1/2 dozen could pay for a rocket.
Most of these guesses are way too low, in my opinion. I’d say somewhere in the range of $50 million to $150 million. On the high end of that range if there is only a single passenger. This is the ultimate luxury travel adventure and the price will be set accordingly. It’s part of the appeal. This guy whose name will be announced tomorrow is almost certainly a multi-billionaire. And SpaceX will be looking to start recovering a substantial part of their investment.
ordinary people, if they save up, can go maybe — Elon Musk
I left off the quotes. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get the quote word for word exactly right.
If the question is whether the ticket price for this first trip is in the range of “ordinary people, if they save up,” I’m pretty sure the answer is no. But I don’t deny that the aspiration is to make the flights much cheaper in the future.
wow, your name looks so much like mine that my blurry, early morning eyes thought for a moment that I was talking to myself.
$30,000,000
Get the BFR working first.
I am starting to get a bit pessimistic about that, mostly because of the myriad problems I am seeing at the sister company, Tesla.
Completely different challenges. Tesla’s problem is to fabricate too much of the same thing; SpaceX’s problem is to develop a way to fabricate just a few of the same thing. And SpaceX is way ahead on this.
The auto industry is full of failed innovators since it is a mature industry with entrenched players and attitudes ready to step on you. Henry Kaiser, the Elon Musk of the 1940’s, was able to revolutionize ship building during World War II, but failed in his attempt in his attempt to enter the industry.
It’s also worth mentioning that the ways Keiser revolutionize ship building were essentially the same as those used by production line car manufacturing. Having all the right ideas about the process and principals doesn’t help when the competition has spent decades turning those ideas into smooth, efficient practice.
Exactly. Automobiles are a very mature industry and hard to disrupt. I keep hoping that Elon Musk will move on and just focus on space.
And demand for ships declined greatly after Germany/Japan stopped sinking them, making such high volume production unnecessary.
Is there some sort of accepted definition for a “mature” industry? And if so, what sort of action is needed to count as “disruption”? Perhaps a mature industry is one in which disruption is relatively difficult?
Would the construction and use of rockets be considered mature?
Manufacture of expendable LVs is relatively mature, being close in technology to aircraft manuafturing. However Musk has disrupted the spacecraft launch business by focus on cost reduction, by recognizing the cost of contracting for major components and bringing almost the entire manufacturing process in-house, and by introducing reusability.
In the case of automobiles, the introduction of lithium-ion batteries, sparked by the more innovative laptop and cell-phone industries, could possibly have disrupted the automotive field. But legacy auto manufacturers were half-hearted about marketing EVs in competition with thier own mature IC engine technology. Tesla did not have this problem since it has no investment in internal combustion, and was able to take an extraordinary risk. Despite similar technology EVs from GM (Bolt) and Nissan (Leaf) have been less successful than Tesla, in part because they are competing with conventional vehicles from thier own manufacturers.
“extraordinary risk”- an interesting phrase in this context. The money Tesla spent to design and manufacture electric cars is chump change to GM and Volvo and all the rest. These companies could easily have developed electric cars.
But they did not.
Yes. A mature industry is one where the increase in demand comes from an increase in the population demographics and technology innovation is slow. It’s is characterized by being dominated by a few firms with few product innovations. Typewriters in the 1960’s, Steam engines in the 1930’s are good examples. A disruption is an innovation, generally by an outside firm, that changes drastically the economics, major producers, and markets in only a few years. Often it even changes society.
GM’s developmebt of Diesels, Apple’s personal computer are the classic examples. The first killed the steam engine and the firms like Baldwin and Lima that built them. The latter put an end to Smith-Corona, although IBM did adapt and continued to dominate in the new PC market. But when did you last saw them advertise a typewriter for sale ?
Don’t forget digital cameras and photography. When was the last time you sent a roll of film off to a darkroom to be developed? (A disruption which, to my mind, also destroyed a nice form of art. The photographs may still be around and some may still have a darkroom, but where can you buy film and paper?)
Thanks. How useful is this- I mean, having a definition of a mature market? Does this definition facilitate some other sort of discussion?
Am I the only one feeling like his chain has been yanked by SpaceX/Musk for the umpeenth time? I’m a huge admirer of all that they have accomplished thus far and hope that they do reach Mars. But, darn it, I’m sick to death of the over-hyped promises. Enough, already. Build it. Test it. Fly it. But please, SpaceX, stop with the vapor ware announcements!
There is nothing to test or build or fly.
At least SLS has some hardware. Not that I believe that that is the solution but they have more to show than 2 year old subscale test videos and one composition tank.
They’re building the hop test Spaceship parts near the Port of LA and in Hawthorne, and Shotwell recently mentioned they’re building full up Raptor engines. To do hops and sub-orbital starting in H2 next year as is scheduled, those will need to be assembled very soon.
Private companies rarely share information on their internal research and development with the public. It would be fair to say we don’t know how far along SpaceX with BFR. It would not be fair to say they have made no progress in two years, simply because they haven’t publicized it. Blue Origins is also very closed mouthed about their progress.
The announcement is not aimed at your or me, it’s for potential investors and customers:
1. For potential investors, this presents one of the many new business cases BFR can enable. It also shows that SpaceX’s effort is serious enough that one or more billionaires is willing to put money down on this service.
2. For other billionaires who want to join the elite club of 24 humans who went to the Moon, this signals that the SpaceX lunar traveling agency is open for business, now is the time to send money and reserve a seat.
What vapor ware? F9b5 is quite reusable and the FH flies it’s first non-test mission in November.
The faith shown here in the as-yet-to-be BFS appears to exceed that professed for the existence of the FSM.
Fascinating.
That’s what you get by building and launching the biggest operational launch vehicle in the world, using your own money.
“US$7 million (external estimate for full reusability)
US$335 million (estimate build cost for booster and ship)”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Those numbers are probably optimistic in the extreme, priced to LEO, and don’t include some key services…like training and flight support.
And if I’m not mistaken, it seats 100 plus gear to Mars. So my admittedly very rough and optimistic estimate is assuming an actual launch cost of $100M to the Moon (a number that I read somewhere and then adjusted upwards), divided by 100 and multiplied by 2.5 for training and two weeks of flight control support there and back again.
If you amortize the various research and development costs over a thousand flights (remember, this isn’t a NASA rocket), it would only be 336,000 a flight, and might already be included in the $7 million a flight figure.
Why do you think the price of the first seats will have anything to do with the cost? Selling at a loss is a known way to market a new product. And if the seats are going to famous or semi-famous people, SpaceX gets lots of free advertising as well. (Correction, even more free advertising, since they would get plenty no matter who flys, but also endorsements if the passengers are well-known.)
Correct. It is a test/demonstration flight, like Starman. However, unlike Starman it probably isn’t a one-off. The price I predicted is intended to be the ongoing price.
Technology adoption life cycle
“The technology adoption lifecycle is a sociological model that describes the adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation, according to the demographic and psychological characteristics of defined adopter groups. The process of adoption over time is typically illustrated as a classical normal distribution or “bell curve”. The model indicates that the first group of people to use a new product is called “innovators”, followed by “early adopters”. Next come the early majority and late majority, and the last group to eventually adopt a product are called “Laggards” or “phobics.” For example, a phobic may only use a cloud service when it is the only remaining method of performing a required task, but the phobic may not have an in-depth technical knowledge of how to use the service.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
In the last edition of his work, “The Diffusion of Innovations”, Everett Rodgers noted that in the area of pesticides the “Laggards” actually became the Innovators of the movement for Organic Farming. Also it’s proper name is the Technology Adootion Curve as per the works of Everett Rodgers.
There’ll be suborbital flights long before any BLEO flight.
They said “traveling to space”, not going to the Moon.
Why would they send people on maiden flight? This is not the Space Shuttle, it’s fully automated and fully reusable, there will be many test flights before they put crew on it.
I am hopeful that Mr. Musk and his minions will make it t the Moon in all due haste. Its great we are living in a time when we can expect it and that he is able to achieve such goals with mainly private dollars. By comparison, the dolts at NASA seem unable to achieve anything. This week,afterall they were proclaiming victory because they got a 100 year old parachute design to operate. The week before they put out a request for school students to identify whether anyone might know if there are any scientific uses to Orion and the Gateway They have spent tens of billions of my tax money over nearly 15 years and haven’t figured out what they are doing or why…it is all just a bit to pathetic to be real and yet it is. What a waste!
Really good and detailed article on all of the challenges facing SpaceX and their BFR and BFS. Consider what Boeing faced with the Dreamliner, and it was only 50% composite and did not have to survive launch stresses and reentry heating.
https://www.businessinsider…
The critical question for SpaceX is not flying a passenger around the Moon but finding viable commercial markets for the BFR. At the nmoment that would have to be for the existing commercial satellite operators, DOD and NASA, with only NASA having human launch and payloads for beyond Earth orbit. AIUI that was one reason for the reduction in size from the originat MCT concept, however an upper stage designed for unmanned cargo launch (but potentially reusable) may still be needed to maximize payload. The size of commercial and militarypayloads has gradually been increasing and the BFR may provide an incentive for larger commercial and scientific payloads, as well as space station modules.
If Elon Musk meets the target price for the BFR of $10 million a flight for 150 tons to LEO, basically $33/lb, he will own the global launch market. Many new space ventures will be practical. At that price he could sell even seats to orbital tourists for a 12 hour flight for under $100,000 each, or do the point to point for about $10,000 a passenger seat.
If the BFR hits its numbers every other launcher will be history, including all the new small sat ones. The only ones left would be ones flown by foreign governments for purposes of national prestige or because they won’t be allowed to fly on it because of ITAR. The closest analogies of similar revolution was when the transcontinental railroad replaced the very expensive 6 month trip by wagon to California from New York with a 6 day trip on a passenger train or when the transatlantic cable cut the time for messages from Europe from a month to a couple of hours.
That is the magnitude of the disruption the BFR will create. The economics of everything Industry and NASA does in space will change dramatically overnight. NASA won’t need to worry about what becomes of the ISS anymore. With just a handful of flights the BFR will be able to return it to a museum on Earth for under $100 million or so. Or reassemble it in an orbit around the Moon. NASA won’t need to build a lunar gateway. A BFR could be placed in the Gateway orbit for about $20 million plus whatever the cost of experiments/instruments they want in it. And those costs will change too when everything could be return to Earth to be fixed if needed.
The BFR is really the science fiction rocket that makes Tomorrowland reality.
I agree about the economics. Exciting times are ahead. Maybe the passenger flight is more for marketing than an attempt to build circumlunar tourism.
“they won’t be allowed to fly on it because of ITAR”
Interesting point. One of Musk’s first customers for the F9 was a Chinese satellite operator. SFAIK the first time a Chinese company paid a US company for a launch. Good for the trade deficit, Unfortunately there was a lot of resistance even to allowing his customers onto the center to supprt the payload processing and launch, and they may have decided it was not worth the effort to do business in the US.
That’s probably the form ITAR problems would take. That law doesn’t apply to imports into the United States, and I’m not aware of any laws against launching non-military/national security satellites from foreign countries.
But ITAR does restrict how much a foreign satellite provider can see about the launch vehicle, integrating the payload with it, and performance and operations during launch. That’s to avoid technology transfer about the launch vehicle. If certifications are required about a satellite’s non-military nature, that could also be an additional pain. At some point, foreign customers may say (and have said) it just isn’t worth it and/or wants more transparency. If so, they eat a higher cost (in the case of a Falcon 9) and a US company doesn’t get the money.
Note that one of the items on the list of regulation changes the NSC is looking at is ITAR.
Yes, but that price is based on many assumptions, including but not limited to the number of flights between major maintenance, and the cost and time required to turn the vehicle around between flights. If those numbers are off by an order of magnitude (quite possible, given the lack of experience with reuse) and the payload is lower than advertised, then things aren’t quite so wonderful. Still quite good, just not that good. Also, the new small satellite launchers are focused on customers who want to select the destination orbit, not live with whatever the primary customer wants. That niche market may survive whatever BFR does to the rest of the industry.
$100m for 75 tonnes still pwns the rest of the GEOsat and govt launch market. With enough capacity left over to run hybrid cargo/passenger flights. Satellite pays all or most of the launch costs, 20-30 passengers per flight are pure gravy.
It’s not like they are running on small margins with this thing.
Perhaps not for most folks worth $5M…but some would. There are a staggeringly large number of folks in this world worth between $10 and $50 million. They just live in places like Dubai where you and I will never meet them.
Actually, acquiring a net worth of $10m by age 65 isn’t that difficult.
How do I know? Oh, easy! Looking back over the past 65 years I see all the mistakes I made that could have gotten me to $10M, that’s how!
Well, now we know! Maezawa-san is paying NOT for just his seat, but for 6-8 seats (possibly including Musk) for ARTISTS, including painters, photographers, musicians, architects, writers and others. Notional launch date sometime in 2023. A LOT of details to be ironed out before then. Ask Elon himself said, it will be risky and dangerous, but hopefully will pave the way to the Moon, Mars and beyond. The objective is not only to send people to Mars, but to inspire future generations.
As far as Boeing is concerned, Musk welcomes the competition!
Personally, I think the whole idea is wild! He’s not just pushing the envelope, he is talking about redefining it! It is nuts! It is wacky! And I hope to God he pulls it off! (And I have painted, and published some articles, and if he had room, and I could pass the physical at, by then 81, I’d go in a nanosecond!)
Ad LEO! Ad Luna! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!