SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been eager to see Starship fly, promising different dates for its inaugural flight. The dearMoon mission would be a test of Starship’s true capabilities, a reusable, super heavy-lift launch vehicle that’s poised to land on the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program. As per a $2.89 billion contract with NASA, the company needs to demonstrate that Starship can land humans on the Moon by late 2025. For dearMoon, however, the spacecraft won’t need to perform a lunar landing.
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SpaceX still has an outstanding list of regulatory requirements that it needs to fulfill in order to get a license from the Federal Aviation Administration, and it’s not yet clear whether the company has completed them.
Whenever it does take place, the dearMoon mission will take civilians beyond any previous private mission. It does seem to be a super exclusive list of people that get to experience the journey, so whether the mission will make space more accessible or not is still yet to be seen. Oh, and someone should probably inform the crew that Starship won’t be equipped with an abort system should an anomaly occur during launch.
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