TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa on Wednesday began a search for eight people to join him as the first private passenger on a trip around the moon with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
I had originally planned to invite artists for the one-week trip scheduled for 2023.
The rejected project “will give more people around the world the opportunity to join this journey. If you see yourself as an artist, you are an artist,” Maezawa said.
The first phase of the application process lasts until March 14.
The entrepreneur, who sold his online fashion business Zozo Inc. to SoftBank in 2019, pays the full cost of the trip with SpaceX’s next-generation reusable launch vehicle, called Starship.
Two recent prototypes have exploded during testing, highlighting the risks to 45-year-old Maezawa and his fellow passengers, who also have to contend with space travel tensions on the first private trip beyond the orbit of the earth.
“This mission we hope people go beyond what has ever happened to any human being on planet Earth,” Musk said, days after SpaceX completed its latest $ 850 million fundraiser, which has helped turn the entrepreneur in one of the richest people in the world.
Maezawa is known for his art collections and supercars and for the cash gifts that have made him the most followed Twitter account in Japan.
Last year he launched a short documentary search of a new girlfriend to accompany him on the trip before retiring citing “mixed feelings.”
Report by Sam Nussey; Edited by Gerry Doyle