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		</div><p>SpaceX has said it will fly two people to the moon next year, a feat not attempted since Nasa&#8217;s Apollo heyday almost half a century ago.</p>
<p>Tech billionaire Elon Musk &#8211; the company&#8217;s founder and chief executive &#8211; announced the news barely a week after launching his first rocket from Nasa&#8217;s famous moon pad.</p>
<p>Two people who know each other approached the company about sending them on a week-long flight just beyond the moon, according to Mr Musk.</p>
<p>He would not identify the pair or the price tag, but said they have paid a &#8220;significant&#8221; deposit and are &#8220;very serious&#8221; about it.</p>
<p>&#8220;Fly me to the moon &#8230; Ok,&#8221; he said in a light-hearted tweet following the news conference.<br />
Mr Musk said SpaceX is on track to launch astronauts to the International Space Station for Nasa in mid-2018.</p>
<p>This moon mission would follow about six months later, by the end of the year under the current schedule, using a Dragon crew capsule and a Falcon heavy rocket launched from Nasa&#8217;s former moon pad in Florida.</p>
<p>If all goes as planned, it could happen close to the 50th anniversary of Nasa&#8217;s first manned flight to the moon, on Apollo 8.</p>
<p>The SpaceX moonshot is designed to be autonomous &#8211; unless something goes wrong, Mr Musk said.<br />
&#8220;I think they are entering this with their eyes open, knowing that there is some risk here,&#8221; he told reporters.</p>
<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re certainly not naive, and we&#8217;ll do everything we can to minimise that risk, but it&#8217;s not zero,&#8221; said Mr Musk, adding that the pair will receive &#8220;extensive&#8221; training.</p>
<p>He said he did not have permission to release the passengers&#8217; names, and would not say if they were men, women or even pilots. He would only admit: &#8220;It&#8217;s nobody from Hollywood.&#8221;</p>
<p>The paying passengers would make a long loop around the moon, skimming the lunar surface and then going well beyond, perhaps 300,000 or 400,000 miles. It&#8217;s about 240,000 miles to the moon alone, one way.<br />
The mission would not involve a lunar landing.</p>
<p>&#8220;This should be a really exciting mission that hopefully gets the world really excited about sending people into deep space again,&#8221; Mr Musk said.</p>
<p>In a statement, Nasa commended SpaceX &#8220;for reaching higher&#8221;. In all, 24 astronauts flew to the moon and 12 walked on its surface from 1969 to 1972.</p>
<p>California-based SpaceX already has a long list of firsts, with its sights ultimately set on Mars. It became the first private company to launch a spacecraft into orbit and safely return it to Earth in 2010, and the first commercial enterprise to fly to the space station in 2012 on a supply mission.</p>
<p>A week ago, SpaceX made its latest delivery from Kennedy Space Centre&#8217;s Launch Complex 39A, where the Apollo astronauts flew to the moon and shuttle crews rocketed into orbit.</p>
<p>That will be where the private moon mission will originate as well.</p>
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