The first of two $150m (£91m) tickets for a pioneering tourist mission to the moon has been sold, and the name said to be in the frame is James Cameron, who has directed some of the highestgrossing films of all time, including Titanic, the Terminator series and Avatar.
Space Adventures, the American company offering the trip scheduled for 2015, would say only that the buyer of the ticket was a “well-known” personality.
The expedition will begin aboard a Soyuz spaceship launched from Kazakhstan.
The orbit of the moon during the 17-day trip, which will also include a stop-over on the International Space Station (ISS), marks a new departure for space tourism. Only seven tourists have travelled into space since 2001, when businessman Dennis Tito paid a reported £12m to spend nearly eight days in orbit on the ISS with the Russian space agency.
The moon trip is also a much bigger adventure than that planned by Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson’s company, in which 430 people have signed up to be blasted at 3,000mph to the edge of space, starting in 2013.
Cameron, 56, has a record as an adventurer. Before his 1997 blockbuster Titanic, he helped to develop mini-submarines that could withstand enormous underwater pressures but were small enough to enter and film inside the real wreck. He has also commissioned a submersible vessel rigged with 3-D cameras capable of the seven-mile descent into the Mariana trench in the Pacific for his sequel to Avatar.
Associates of Cameron say he has been talking to both Nasa and the Russian space agency about mounting a 3-D camera on the ISS to shoot a documentary similar to Aliens of the Deep, a film in which he explored the bottom of the ocean.
“The technology is very similar, and Jim is fascinated by outer space. But the cameras have to be made a lot lighter than current models,” said a source.
Tom Shelley, the British president of Space Adventures, would not even disclose whether the buyer of the seat was male or female, saying the name must remain “top secret”. He added: “Only 24 people have seen the dark side of the moon, and the sight of the Earth rising behind the moon must be one of the most amazing moments in anyone’s life.”
Jeff Foust, an aerospace analyst who edits The Space Review, said it remained to be seen whether more missions would follow the one planned for 2015. “This could be the beginning of a brand new market for private adventurers or researchers, or this flight could be a onetime stunt,” he said.
In addition to Virgin and Space Adventures, other technology tycoons are backing plans for space tourism. They include Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, whose planned craft is called New Shepard. John Carmack, developer of the Quake and Doom computer games, is planning his Fishbowl spaceship, which has massive windows designed to give tourists the best possible view. While Elon Musk, co-founder of the PayPal website, is building a rocket and capsule to be used for low-cost orbital flights.
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