In the Heinlein book The Man Who Sold the Moon DD Harriman was an industrialist who funded spaceflight development to fruition (this was pre-Apollo). For his trouble he was forever denied the right to travel himself as at first he was too important, and later in life too infirm to get permission. Retired, he cobbled together an old moon shuttle ship repurposed for joyrides with a drunken pilot and they refit it for the moon. Officials got wind of the plot and there was a race to deliver an injunction / stop the flight by any means necessary.

Life doesn't always imitate art so well. They need to launch this bird before the courts can stop them.