Space tours to the Moon - why not?

The first space tourist may be flying around the moon already five years from now if Space Adventures company has its way. The Virginia-based private space exploration company recently announced plans to offer trips around the moon to space tourists.

Passengers willing to pay the $150 million ticket price would launch into space aboard a three-seat Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Upon reaching space, the craft would rendezvous with a waiting, unmanned rocket that would take the spacecraft the rest of the way to the moon, where the moon would be circled at an altitude of 62 miles.

According to Popular Science, Space Adventures expects to begin launching their trips around the moon in February 2017 - the 50th anniversary of the start of the Apollo program.

Space Adventures says it has already sold one of the two tickets available, and is now in talks with a second one.

The Russian cosmonauts' training center outside Moscow has already offered to get the space tourists ready for the flight to the Moon.