JAPAN BILLIONAIRE TO BE FIRST MOON TRAVELLER
Yusaku Maezawa will fly on giant SpaceX rocket as early as 2023
JAPANESE billionaire and online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa will be the first man to fly on a monster SpaceX rocket around the Moon as early as 2023, and he plans to bring six to eight artists along.
Maezawa, 42, will be the first lunar traveller since the last United States Apollo mission in 1972. He paid an unspecified amount of money for the privilege.
“Ever since I was a kid, I have loved the Moon,” Maezawa said at SpaceX headquarters and rocket factory here in California on Monday.
“This is my lifelong dream.” He added: “I choose to go to the Moon... with artists!”
He said the artists would include painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians, film directors, fashion designers and architects.
“They will be asked to create something after they return to Earth. These masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us.”
Maezawa is chief executive of Japan’s largest online fashion mall, and is the 18th richest person in Japan with a fortune of US$3 billion (RM12.4 billion), according to business magazine Forbes.
Until now, Americans are the only ones who have left Earth’s orbit. Twenty-four National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronauts voyaged to the Moon during the Apollo era of the 1960s and 1970s. Twelve walked on the lunar surface.
The first space tourist was Dennis Tito, an American businessman who in 2001 paid US$20 million to fly on a Russian spaceship to the International Space Station.
SpaceX chief executive officer Elon Musk described Maezawa as the “bravest” and “best adventurer”.
Musk said he would not reveal the price Maezawa paid for the Moon trip, but said it would be “free for the artists”.
“This is dangerous, to be clear. This is no walk in the park. When you are pushing the frontier, there is a chance something could go wrong.”
When asked by reporters if Musk would be a passenger, he left the door open for the possibility.
The ride would take place aboard a Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), which might not be ready for human flight for five years at least, Musk said.
BFR was first announced in 2016, and was touted as the most powerful rocket in history, even more potent than the Saturn V Moon rocket that launched the Apollo missions five decades ago.
Last year, Musk said BFR’s admittedly “ambitious” goal was to make a test flight to Mars in 2022, followed by a crewed flight to the Red Planet in 2024.
This isn’t the first time Musk has vowed to send tourists around the Moon. Last year, he said two paying tourists would circle the Moon in 2018, but those plans did not materialise.
Musk showed off designs for the 118m-long BFR, which will consist of a first stage with engines and fuel systems, and a second stage with the spacecraft where the passengers will ride.
Musk estimated it would cost US$5 billion to build.
The BFR spacecraft is reminiscent of the space shuttle, the US spaceships that carried astronauts to space 135 times from 1981 to 2011.
Musk has said he wants the BFR’s vessel to be able to hold 100 people, and that the launch system could one day be used to colonise the Moon and Mars to make humans a “multi-planetary” species.
Other space companies, like Virgin Galactic, founded by British tycoon Richard Branson, and billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin, are working on trips to the edge of space that could offer tourists a chance at weightlessness for 10 minutes or so.
Virgin’s trip will cost US$250,000. Blue Origin’s price has not been revealed.
Russian and Chinese companies are also working on space tourism plans.
Next year, SpaceX, which has received billions in NASA funding to ferry supplies to the ISS and build a crew vehicle, hopes to become the first private company to send astronauts to the space station.