The world’s first-ever rich-guy space tourist wants to return to space, this time taking his wife on a cruise around the Moon aboard Elon Musk’s Starship.
Long before Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos shot themselves to the edge of space, investment banker and former Nasa engineer Dennis Tito paid his way to a week on the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket and to the tune of $20m. That 2001 flight kicked off the space tourism era, but the now 82-year-old Mr Tito isn’t interested in a 10-minute suborbital flight like other recent space tourists in the industry he helped found
“Been there, done that,” he said.
Instead, Mr Tito, his wife Akiko, and 10 other people who have yet to buy tickets for an undisclosed amount, will take a week-long cruise to and around the Moon aboard a SpaceX starship spacecraft, a vehicle SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said is designed to one day carry hundreds of humans to build a city on Mars. Mr Tito has not disclosed how much he is paying for the Starship trip.
Mr Tito’s weeklong moonshot — its date to be determined and years in the future — will bring him within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the lunar far side.
The couple recognize there’s a lot of testing and development still ahead for Starship, a shiny, bullet-shaped behemoth that’s yet to even attempt to reach space.
“We have to keep healthy for as many years as it’s going to take for SpaceX to complete this vehicle,” Tito said in an interview this week with The Associated Press. “I might be sitting in a rocking chair, not doing any good exercise, if it wasn’t for this mission.”
Tito is actually the second billionaire to make a Starship reservation for a flight around the moon. Japanese fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa announced in 2018 he was buying an entire flight so he could take eight or so others with him, preferably artists.
Well-heeled customers are sampling briefer tastes of space with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic expects to take paying passengers next year. Both companies offer flights that are just minutes long, lofting customers to the edge of space, but staying well shy of orbital velocity and landing near where they launched from.
SpaceX enabled the first ever space tourism mission to orbit in September 2021, providing the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft for the Inspiration 4 mission, a fully private orbital mission paid for by billionaire Jared Isaacman.
Much larger than the Crew Dragon, the SpaceX Starship vehicle has yet to launch atop a Super Heavy booster from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. At 394 feet (120 meters) and 17 million pounds (7.7 million kilograms) of liftoff thrust, it’s the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built.
NASA already has contracted for a Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in 2025 or so, in the first lunar touchdown since Apollo.
Mr Tito said the couple’s contract with SpaceX, signed in August 2021 and announced Wednesday, includes an option for a flight within five years from now. Tito would be 87 by then and he wanted an out in case his health falters.
“But if I stayed in good health, I’d wait 10 years,” he said.
Mr Tito’s wife, 57, said she needed no persuading. The Los Angeles residents are both pilots and understand the risks. They share Musk’s vision of a spacefaring future and believe a married couple flying together to the moon will inspire others to do the same.
Mr Tito began his career as an engineer with Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s, working on the Mariner missions to Venus and Mars. He would later leave Nasa and found investment company Wilshire Associates in 1972.
Mr Tito, who sold Wilshire Associates almost two years ago, said he doesn’t feel guilty splurging on spaceflight versus spending the money here on Earth.
“We’re retired and now it’s time to reap the rewards of all the hard work,” he said.
Tito expects he’ll also shatter preconceived notions about age, much as John Glenn’s space shuttle flight did in 1998. The first American to orbit the Earth still holds the record as the oldest person in orbit.
“He was only 77. He was just a young man,” Mr Tito said. “I might end up being 10 years older than him.”
Additional reporting by agencies.
