Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the faces of the Moon landing era. Elon Musk’s Mars era may get a very different public face in Chun Wang, a cryptocurrency billionaire whose fortune traces back to Bitcoin mining.
Wang is expected to lead a future SpaceX Starship mission that would fly past Mars and return to Earth. SpaceX has not announced a launch date, and the plan still depends on Starship proving it can safely carry humans far beyond Earth’s orbit.
From Apollo heroes to billionaire passengers
Private spaceflight has already moved through its celebrity phase. In April 2025, Blue Origin flew Katy Perry, Gayle King, Lauren Sánchez, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn, and Kerianne Flynn on its NS-31 New Shepard mission. The all-female suborbital flight lasted minutes, but it drew heavy attention worldwide.
Wang’s planned mission is far more ambitious than a short trip to the edge of space. The Mars flyby could reportedly last around two years, making it a much harder test of both the passenger and the spacecraft. If SpaceX pulls it off, Wang could become one of the first humans to travel toward Mars, even without landing there.
Wang is not new to private spaceflight. He previously commanded SpaceX’s Fram2 mission, a Crew Dragon flight that carried four civilian astronauts over Earth’s polar regions in 2025. The mission lasted several days and gave Wang actual orbital flight experience before his planned jump to Starship. That does not make the Mars flyby any less ambitious, but it does mean SpaceX is not picking someone with no prior time in space.
Musk’s Mars dream still needs a working vehicle
Elon Musk has long said SpaceX wants to reach Mars. Starship is the rocket built for that goal, but it is still being tested.
SpaceX’s upgraded Starship V3 launched on May 22, 2026, after an earlier scrub due to a launch tower issue. The uncrewed test reportedly achieved most of its goals, including stage separation and mock Starlink satellite deployment, before ending with a splashdown in the Indian Ocean and erupting into a massive fireball. SpaceX said the fiery end was intentional, as the company did not plan to recover or reuse the experimental spacecraft.
Starship has not carried humans yet, so Wang’s Mars mission is still a long way from happening. For now, the plan depends on SpaceX proving that the rocket can safely take people far beyond Earth.
