Lifeboat Foundation

Only a lucky handful of artists and a Japanese billionaire will take a trip on a rocketship to the moon with SpaceX. But the moonshot won’t just be televised; you’ll get to experience it from Earth in virtual reality.

That’s the message from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on the upcoming private moon flight of entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, which Musk unveiled to the world Monday (Sept. 17). Maezawa will launch on a trip around the moon on SpaceX’s new Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), and he plans to take between six and eight artists along for the ride. The flight, called the Lunar BFR Mission, could launch as early as 2023, and we’ll all be able to watch it live and in VR, Musk said.

“Moon mission will be livestreamed in high def VR,” Musk announced on Twitter Tuesday (Sept. 18), “so it’ll feel like you’re there in real-time minus a few seconds for speed of light.” That speed-of-light reference is apparently a nod to the ever-so-slight time lag for a signal to cross the 238,000 miles (383,000 kilometers) between Earth and the moon. [How SpaceX’s Passenger Moon Flight Will Work].

Continue reading “SpaceX Will Livestream Moon Tourist Flight in HD Virtual Reality, Elon Musk Says” »

Following a detailed update to SpaceX’s BFR plans and the first privately contracted mission to the Moon, CEO Elon Musk has tweeted that the company intends to stream the entire six-day journey in “high def VR”, a plan that would demand unprecedented communications capabilities between the Moon and the Earth.

Musk further confirmed that “Starlink should be active by [2023]”, suggesting – at a minimum – that the SpaceX-built and SpaceX-launched internet satellite constellation will have reached what is known as ‘initial operating capability’, pegged for Starlink at roughly 800 satellites launched.

Continue reading “SpaceX to livestream private BFR Moon mission ‘in high-def VR’ with Starlink satellites” »

By tapping robotic and sensor technologies, a small free-flying spacecraft is being demonstrated to autonomously investigate lava tubes on the Moon.

Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is partnering with scientists from the RIS4E node of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), led by Stony Brook University.

With everyone from NASA to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos looking to send people to the Moon and beyond, engineers at NASA’s Swamp Works are hard at work figuring out how to help future.

Elon Musk, the founder of the rocket company SpaceX, is about to reveal who the company’s first lunar space tourist will be.

“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 travelling to space,” SpaceX said on its website.

Continue reading “Elon Musk And SpaceX Is Announcing The First Lunar Mission Tourist RIGHT NOW” »

This evening, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed that Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire and founder of Zozotown, Japan’s largest online clothing retailer, will be the first private customer to ride around the Moon on the company’s future massive rocket, the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR). Maezawa plans to fly on the trip as early as 2023, and he wants to take artists with him to turn the entire ride into an art project called #dearMoon. A website for the mission went live after the announcement.

“Finally, I can tell you that I choose to go to the Moon! I choose to go to the moon with artists!” Maezawa said to announce his trip at a SpaceX event.

Continue reading “SpaceX will send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa to the Moon” »

The SpaceX CEO is also showing photos of its BFR rocket, which could eventually go to Mars.

A 5 km settlement radius corresponds roughly to the sweet design spot where earthlike radiation shielding is produced for free by the required structural mass.

Overall, the settlement concept satisfies the following generic requirements for long-term large-scale settling of the solar system:

1g artificial gravity, earthlike atmosphere, earthlike radiation protection. 2. Large enough size so that internals of the settlement exceed a person’s lifetime-integrated capacity to explore. 3. Standard of living reminiscent to contemporary royal families on Earth, quantified by up to 25,000 m2 of urban living area and 2000 m2 of rural area per inhabitant (290,000 square feet per person). 4. Access to other settlements and Earth by spacecraft docking ports, using safe arrival and departure procedures that do not require impulsive chemical propulsion.

Continue reading “Long-term colonization of the solar system with 290,000 square feet per person” »

SpaceX is set for a surprise event that is expected to revolve the announcement of a newly-contracted launch planned to send a private individual around the Moon with BFR, potentially queuing up a true race (back) to the Moon between SpaceX and NASA sometime in the early to mid-2020s.

Alongside the official announcement and a fascinating render revealing a dramatically-updated iteration of BFR’s spaceship upper stage, CEO Elon Musk cryptically hinted on Twitter that the private customer could be Japanese, as well as confirming that the spaceship as shown was indicative of a new BFR design.