STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Elon Musk does not yet have a rocket that can circle the moon but does have a passenger. A Japanese billionaire, Yusaku Maezawa, says he'll go. He would be the first private citizen ever to travel so far. He would fly on a rocket made by the SpaceX company. One downside is that Musk's Big Falcon Rocket is not yet built. But he does have lots of plans, including sending people to other planets just in case we can't fix this one. It's MORNING EDITION.
Yusaku Maezawa is the first to book a trip as a private passenger with the commercial space company for a voyage that hasn't been attempted since NASA's Apollo missions ended in 1972.