Japanese billionaire in bid to become the first tourist to visit moon

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has said he plans to blast off on the first-ever private commercial trip around the moon and will invite six to eight artists, architects, designers and other creative people on the week-long journey.

The Spacex Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) is due to make the trip in 2023, company founder Elon Musk announced at an event at its headquarters near Los Angeles. Mr Maezawa, 42, said he wanted 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”.

Mr Musk said the entrepreneur – founder of Japan’s largest retail website and one the country’s richest people – would pay “a lot of money” for the trip, but declined to disclose the exact amount.

Mrmaezawacametospacex with the idea for the group flight, Mr Musk said. “I did not want to have such a fantastic experience by myself,” Mr Maezawa said.

He said he often mused about what artists like late painters Jean-michel Basquiat or Andy Warhol might have come up with if they had travelled into space. “I wish to create amazing works of art for humankind,” he said.

Mr Maezawa did not immediately say who would be on his guest list for the space flight, but in response to a question from a reporter he said he would consider inviting Mr Musk.

“Maybe we’ll both be on it,” Mr Musk said with a smile.

He said the BFR was still in development and would make several unmanned test launches before it takes on passengers. The reusable 387ft rocket would have its own dedicated passenger ship.

The mission will not involve a lunar landing.

The average distance from Earth to the moon is about 237,685 miles.

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 2,023. The space agency also aims to build a staffed gateway near the moon during the 2020s.

The outpost would serve as a stepping-off point for the lunar surface, Mars and points beyond. Mr Musk outlined a somewhat different Spacex mission last year.

He said then two people who know each other approached the company about a weeklong flight to the moon and back. Mr Musk said the trip would happen this year.

That original mission would have used a Falcon Heavy – the most powerful rocket flying today – and a Dragon crew capsule similar to the one Nasa astronauts will use to fly to the International Space Station as early as next year.