Japanese billionaire businessman Yusaku Maezawa speaks at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Michael Sheetz | CNBC
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced Tuesday that he will choose eight members of the public to accompany him on his journey around the moon, scheduled to fly with SpaceX’s Starship rocket in 2023.
“I invite you to join me on this mission,” Maezawa said in a video.
Maezawa, who announced the mission in September 2018, along with EspaxX founder Elon Musk, said the plan has evolved from flying artists on a trip into lunar orbit.
His project, called dearMoon, will now fly “10 to 12 people in total,” with eight of the crew from members of the public that Maezawa plans to choose.
The billionaire says he will “pay for the whole trip,” so those who accompany him will fly for free. Maezawa made a fortune after founding this fashion retail company Zozotown, which he resigned in 2019 after selling a majority stake in SoftBank.
DearMoon’s mission will take three days to fly to the moon, go after it in orbit and then spend three days returning. Musk added that in addition to the historic first as a private lunar mission, the rocket’s flight path means it will go beyond the distance traveled by Apollo missions.
“We hope this mission will go beyond what any human being on planet Earth has ever gone,” Musk said.
The mission flight plan.
dear Moon
The dearMoon website says the “pre-registration” is open until March 14th. The pre-registration application asks for your name, country, email address and a profile picture. On March 21, a process of “initial screening” begins, with a “final interview and medical examination” at the end of May.
There are two “key criteria” for anyone applying to fly with Maezawa: first, that a potential passenger can advance “in any activity” in which they find themselves “going into space.”
“By going into space, could you do something that’s even better, even bigger?” Maezawa asked.
Second, the eight aspiring astronauts must “be willing and able to support other crew members who share similar aspirations,” he said.
The Starship SN9 prototype is launched from the company’s development facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
SpaceX
It’s been almost two and a half years since Maezawa made his original DearMoon announcement and the project has been adjusted to the 2023 goal for the mission launch.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has continued to work on the development of Starship. The rocket represents a next-generation vehicle that is key to Musk’s space exploration dreams.
Musk intends Starship to be fully reusable (not just the booster, which is the bottom of the rocket) by landing and re-launching in a more aircraft-like way.
SpaceX has not yet reached orbit with a Starship rocket, but is rapidly building and testing prototypes at its Boca Chica, Texas facility. The company has successfully launched multiple prototypes of starships, landing them safely after short flights at about 500 feet altitude.
Its two most recent high-altitude flights, despite having surpassed multiple development milestones, exploded on impact during landing attempts.
SpaceX has not revealed how much it has invested so far in the Starship program, but Musk previously estimated that he expects the company to cost about $ 5 billion.
It should be noted that SpaceX’s valuation has skyrocketed since Maezawa’s original announcement, from about $ 25 billion at the time to about $ 74 billion this past month.
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