Watch SpaceX and Elon Musk name the first moon tourist via livestream

Elon Musk, the founder of
SpaceX and the rocket company’s chief
designer.

Dave Mosher/Business
Insider

• Tonight, SpaceX plans
  to reveal “the world’s first private passenger” to
  fly around the moon.
• Elon Musk will announce the
  name of the passenger and describe the lunar mission.
• The lunar voyager will be launched into space aboard
  SpaceX’s new Big
  Falcon Rocket system.
• SpaceX will stream live video of the event on YouTube
  starting around 9 p.m. EDT (6 p.m. PDT), which you can
  watch below.

Elon Musk, the founder of the rocket company SpaceX, plans to
reveal who the company’s first
lunar space tourist will be on Monday night.

“SpaceX has signed the world’s first private passenger to fly
around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle – an important step
toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling
to space,” SpaceX said on its website. “Only 24 humans have been to the Moon in
history. No one has visited since the last Apollo mission in
1972.”

SpaceX said the mission will launch aboard its upcoming launch
system, called the Big
Falcon Rocket, or BFR. 

The BFR is an ambitious launch system that’s being
prototyped at the
Port of Los Angeles. The design, at least as Musk
described it during a 2017 presentation, calls for a
157-foot-tall spaceship that will ride a 191-foot-tall rocket
booster into orbit.

But new renderings Musk shared this morning
hint at significant design changes. More details about the launch
system will likely be revealed during Musk’s announcement this
evening.  

A
Sept. 2018 rendering of SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket launching
through the cloud tops and toward space.

Elon
Musk/SpaceX via Twitter

Musk and the company’s ultimate goal is to use BFR to
colonize Mars.

Business Insider will be reporting live from SpaceX headquarters
in Hawthorne, California, as we meet the passenger and as Musk
reveals why the person is making the trip. 

You can watch the entire event via streaming video below or on
YouTube. The feed is supposed to start around 9 p.m. EDT (6 p.m.
PDT).