South African born Elon Musk’s company SpaceX today revealed that 42-year-old Yusaku Maezawa will be the first passenger they plan to fly around the moon on a commercial flight. The rocket, expected to transport him, has not yet been built, but the mission has been set down for 2023.
Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire and online fashion tycoon is out-of-this-world excited at the prospect of being on the first human lunar journey since 1972.
Announcement here. https://t.co/B8jHXSRaas
— Yusaku Maezawa 前澤友作 (@yousuck2020) September 18, 2018
He told ABC News that he has long dreamed of visiting the moon and wants to do things that he has never done before.
“So I want the challenge to go to the moon. It’s always been there, it’s always been inside of me,” Maezawa said. “In Japan, you look up at the moon, and it looks like a rabbit,” he said, and with 2023 being the Year of the Rabbit, it falls into place.
He has also extended an invitation to 6-8 artists from around the world to join him on his orbit. “They will be asked to create something after they return to Earth. These masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us,” Maezawa told reporters.
Now begins the hard work. The mission is reliant on a rocket that still has to be built, and according to Musk, “It’s not 100% certain we can bring this to flight.”
A launch system called the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) was unveiled by Musk in 2016 and in 2017 he announced that he would send two paying passengers around the moon in it.
This is BFR from @spacex #dearMoon pic.twitter.com/jZiu1RHqUN
— Yusaku Maezawa 前澤友作 (@yousuck2020) September 18, 2018
The rocket will stand 118 metres high, with a diameter of 9 metres. On Monday Musk unveiled artists impressions of the spaceship expected to take on this mammoth task.
An artists impression of BFR. Picture: SpaceX
In reality, Maezawa won’t land on the moon but rather travel on a “free return trajectory” around the moon.
