Why Elon Musk should fly me to the moon

I have just applied to fly around the moon. My chances of being selected are slim, but is it impossible? Hopefully the explosion of Elon Musk’s test rocket shortly after landing in Texas last week may have winnowed down the competition for a place on Yusaku Maezawa’s flight to the moon and back, scheduled for 2023.

That Texas landing was in fact a success, proving it’s possible for a rocket of this size to launch and return intact: third time lucky, the first two rockets tested having exploded on impact. This one blew up too, but after safely landing, and what the report described as a ‘rapid, unscheduled disassembly’ was a glitch unrelated to the landing technology: so I’m confident Musk can sort out these teething problems in the two years left before my hoped-for journey.

I should explain. Before that billionaire, engineer, Tesla CEO and dreamer, Elon Musk, rockets had historically been single-use disposable items. Musk founded SpaceX with a vision to change this. ‘The cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred,’ he said in 2015. ‘That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionise access to space.’ His Falcon 9 rocket has become a major commercial success. Now this Texan test proves technology can land a big rocket upright just next to the launchpad.

Today, Nasa contracts SpaceX to resupply the International Space Station with food, science projects and recently (for the first time) with astronauts. Musk’s motivation seems ultimately not money but a belief in a better future. ‘If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better,’ he says, ‘it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not.’