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Last week's poll: SpaceX and lunar tourism

Engineer readers believe that taking tourists on a trip around the moon will have benefits for crewed spaceflight as a whole

There's no doubt about the result of our poll last week on the plans announced by Elon Musk of Space X to take two paying passengers (who have apparently already paid deposits) on a return trip into lunar orbit in the company's Dragon capsule that is currently being used to resupply the International Space Station. Of the 604 respondents, an emphatic 74% said that it would help advance manned spaceflight technology, and the majority of people commenting on the poll agreed. The remaining options received roughly equal backing, with 12% believing that the tourist flights would not happen, and 11% saying that they were an irrelevance. Only 3% declined to pick an option.

We look forward with interest to following Musk’s team’s progress on this project, and encourage readers to keep sending us their views on this subject.