SpaceX, the aerospace manufacturer and space transport company founded by tech billionaire Elon Musk, ultimately has its sights set on colonizing Mars, although the company’s next big step on the way there is taking tourists to the moon. And you might be able to go too, provided you have a VR headset in the next five years.
Musk tweeted yesterday that the company would be livestreaming the upcoming moon mission in “high def VR,” which he says will be transmitted in near real-time, of course accounting for the ~238,000 miles the signal will need to travel to reach Earth.
Moon mission will be livestreamed in high def VR, so it’ll feel like you’re there in real-time minus a few seconds for speed of light
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 18, 2018
While the tech billionaire is famously tight-lipped about the specifics of his future projects such as Neuralink, the company working on an implantable brain-computer interface dubbed a neural-lace, Musk revealed in an interview with podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan that the moon mission will cost $5 billion, and is slated to launch as early as 2023.
Musk says video streaming from the moon to Earth will be handled by Starlink, a constellation of satellites currently in development by SpaceX that will be used to service both Earth and extraterrestrial communications. Musk expects the moon’s Starlink cluster to be active by launch, which will ensure full signal coverage.
Yeah, Starlink should be active by then
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 18, 2018
Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese fashion mogul, is the first passenger slated to make the moon trip on the company’s Big Falcon Rocket, which will also presumably carry the VR video capture device—whatever that will be five years from now (we’re certainly hoping for more than monoscopic 360 video).
SpaceX has carried out similar project to engage us Earth-bound folk, such as livestreaming the view from Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster, which was shot into space aboard the Falcon Heavy rocket bound for Mars’ orbit. While some may criticize the move as blatant marketing stunt, reigniting the general public’s fascination with space travel is an important step to the company’s future colonization efforts.
