The California-based company of Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, has announced their plans for the first commercial space flight in 2018. The week-long trip around the moon is expected to occur in late 2018.

The flight will only include the two private passengers who have already put down significant payments, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Despite the high cost of the trip, both passengers will be expected to meet health and fitness requirements as the space travelers have before them.
“Like 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,” SpaceX representatives said in a statement in February.

This is not the first commercial spaceflight SpaceX has performed. In 2008, NASA awarded Commercial Resupply Contracts to private companies. These steps towards accomplishing an efficient private-public partnership have opened new doors for the space travel industry. Most notably, the opening of a new spaceport on Virginia’s coast and no longer relying on foreign governments and restoring America’s capability of being self sustaining in space.
Commercial space flights have been a possibility for decades, but trips such as this have never been economically viable. Space tourism has been previously attempted by the Russian government with ticket prices upwards of $20 million but the SpaceX flight is supposedly much less expensive.

The 2018 flight is expected to launch from the same launch pad used by the Apollo missions in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. This will be the first trip past low-Earth orbit since 1972 when the final Apollo mission launched.
Despite the optimistic timeline, the flight rests on the back of an untested rocket and spacecraft. The Falcon Heavy rocket is the big brother to the Falcon 9 rocket and will be the most powerful rocket in production. The 230-foot rocket will have the ability to lift over 54 metric tons into orbit, more than double the capacity of the Delta IV rocket which is the next most powerful competitor. Not only will the Falcon heavy have a massive payload the rocket will be able to ship it at one-third of the cost of any other rocket. The next generation of Spacex’s crew spacecrafts is the Crew Dragon. A fully autonomous, five-passenger shuttle is expected to make its maiden voyage in the summer of 2017.

While a commercial trip around the moon is a large step for the private space travel industry it is not the end goal for the company. Elon Musk and SpaceX have set their goals higher for the decades to come, with the long term goal of landing humans on Mars by the year 2030.

“Next year is going to be a big year for carrying people to the space station and hopefully beyond,” Elon Musk said in a conference this year.