Few people had heard of aerospace engineer and financial analyst Dennis Tito before 2001. That was the year Tito, then 60, became the first paying space tourist, cutting a $20 million check to Russia to fly aboard a Soyuz spacecraft and spend a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Since then, Tito has remained Earthbound, but has never quite shaken the adventuring bug. Now, he is planning to return to space—this time traveling to the moon, a route nobody but the Apollo astronauts have ever flown.

As SpaceNews, CNN, and others report, Tito, now 82, and his wife Akiko, have both inked a deal to travel on a one-week journey aboard SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft, along with up to 10 other paying passengers. They will be flying a path that will take them around …