Japanese billionaire, artists to orbit around the moon
los angeles — After announcing that he’ll take the first-ever commercial rocket trip around the moon, Yusaku Maezawa said he wants company for the weeklong journey. The Japanese billionaire said he plans to invite six to eight artists, architects, designers and other creative people to join him on board the SpaceX rocket “to inspire the dreamer in all of us.”
The Big Falcon Rocket is scheduled to make the trip in 2023, SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced at an event on Monday at its headquarters near Los Angeles.
Maezawa, 42, said he wants his guests for the lunar orbit “to see the moon up close, and the Earth in full view, and create work to reflect their experience.”
Musk said the entrepreneur, founder of Japan’s largest retail website and one of the country’s richest people, will pay “a lot of money” for the trip but declined to disclose the exact amount. Maezawa came to SpaceX with the idea for the group flight, Musk said.
“I did not want to have such a fantastic experience by myself,” said Maezawa, wearing a blue sports jacket over a white T-shirt printed with a work by the late painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. He said he often mused about what artists like Basquiat or Andy Warhol might have come up with if they’d travelled into space.
“I wish to create amazing works of art for humankind,” Maezawa said.
Maezawa didn’t immediately say who will be on his guest list for the spaceflight, but in response to a question from a reporter he said he’d consider inviting Musk.
“Maybe we’ll both be on it,” Musk said with a smile.
Musk said the BFR is still in development and will make several unmanned test launches before it takes on passengers. The reusable 118-metre (387-foot) rocket will have its own dedicated passenger ship, and its development is expected to cost about $5 billion, Musk said.
The mission will not involve a lunar landing.
The average distance from Earth
to the moon is about 382,500km. Astronauts last visited the moon during Nasa’s Apollo programme. Twenty-four men flew to the moon from 1968 through 1972, and half of them made it to the lunar surface.
Nasa is planning its own lunar flyby with a crew around 2023. The space agency also aims to build a staffed gateway near the moon during the 2020s. —