You may have heard something similar in 2017, when the company announced it wanted to fly two private citizens around the moon late this year, using the same capsule (Dragon 2) that will bring NASA astronauts to the ISS starting 2019.
That plan was later abandoned as SpaceX decided to focus on its new BFR rocket to fulfill its space tourism ambitions, and possibly one of those 2017 mysterious customers is the person who will be announced on Monday.
You may have also heard someone using this canceled mission to cast doubts on SpaceX's seriousness regarding space tourism.
The reality is that this realignment shows exactly he opposite: how serious SpaceX is about space tourism. Not just any form of space tourism, but the most important one: mass market space tourism.
Want to know why? Bear with me.
There are very good reasons to shift from Dragon 2 to the BFR, even if this will result in a few years delay.
-The Big F*cking Rocket is... big: its spaceship is designed to carry dozens of people and its pressurized volume is comparable to an airliner. That extra real estate compared to Dragon 2 (which is comparable to an SUV in size) will come in handy during a multi day, deep space trip, and the mysterious passenger probably won't be flying alone.
-Developing Dragon 2 (and certifying Falcon Heavy) for crewed deep space travel, which has different requirements from the ISS missions it will do for NASA, is costly and not worthwhile for a single mission (or a limited set os missions).
The BFR, on the other hand, is being designed specifically for human deep space travel and tourism, which are part of its core business case.
-But the most important reason is another one, however. Pay attention to this Tweet:
You may dismiss how they specifically say 'enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling to space' as empty PR talk.
Trust me: it's not. They really mean it.
The BFR is designed with the aim of making space truly low cost, accessible to the middle class of developed countries at least.
How? 2 key features: FULL reusability and high volumes. Features that cannot be accomplishment with the Dragon 2, and require funding a radical new design.
Full reusability means that no part of the vehicle get wasted, except fuel and consumables. It also means little to no refurbishment between flights, like airplanes. It's a feature SpaceX is has already implemented in part and is gradually developing with the Falcon 9. It is being fully implemented in the new rocket, using SpaceX's unique experience and lessons learned.
High volumes means carrying a lot of people per flight and making lots of flights per year to keep prices low. All rockets in the world together usually fly less than 100 times per year, while aircrafts take off millions of times.
As opposed to Dragon 2, the BFR is big enough to carry lots of people at a time, depending on the destination (several hundreds if remaining on Earth, dozens for not too far space destinations). But even if it can hold them in theory, you can't fly a lot of people in your vehicle if it is not demonstrably safe and reliable.
This is the mid term feature that SpaceX is designing the BFR to achieve. It will take time and several iterations: by exploiting full reusability (so you're not constrained by complex and slow aerospace grade manufacturing, because there's always a vehicle ready to fly) you can fly a lot and develop reliability. As the BFR matures over the years it will become more and more reliable based on the data acquired and lessons learned, this will enable it will fly more and more people at a time and more and more flights per year.
So why being excited for a few billionaires spending millions to go up? Because that's only the beginning, that's just the initial low volume phase, useful to acquire funds, data and maturity to improve reliability, fly more people and lower the costs. They're essentially paying dozens of millions to board a risky and immature system and make it safer for us later.
Fuck the billionaires? I don't know. In this case, they are our guinea pigs.
Please be excited, because SpaceX isn't only truly willing to achieve broad access to space, they also have a plan that's unlike any previous one, a plan that may be actually feasible.
