The Billionaire Who Bought SpaceX’s Moon Flight Picks Finalists to Travel with Him

Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese fashion billionaire, has chosen 20 finalists to go to the moon with him “for free.”

Yusaku Maezawa, the Japanese fashion magnate who signed up to be SpaceX’s first client to go to the moon on board a Starship spaceship in 2023. He is hunting for a few like-minded space enthusiasts to join him on the fully funded trip. The billionaire has limited the category to only 20 applicants, and the search is currently in the final stages of screening. Maezawa had his eyes on twenty participants after four months and over a million submissions. In a YouTube video posted the same day, Maezawa interviews a number of candidates who outline their goals for the trip.

The finalists represent a diverse spectrum of artistic disciplines, including painters, choreographers, DJs, photographers, and even gold medalists from the Olympics.

About Yusaku Maezawa

Maezawa is the creator of Zozotown, a Japanese fast-fashion retailer. Maezawa, an enthusiastic art collector, narrowed his search to painters. However, the definition is ambiguous. “Aren’t all people who accomplish something creative with their life artists?” If you identify yourself as an artist, you are an artist,” the entrepreneur remarked while announcing the Project dearMoon hunt in March. The 45 years old billionaire claims that he would “pay for the whole voyage,” which means that everyone who joins him will be able to travel for free. Maezawa gained his wealth by launching the fashion retail firm Zozotown. Later on, which he sold a shareholding to SoftBank in 2019 and resigned therefrom.

Some Insights Regarding The Crew

The 45 years old billionaire uploaded a video on his YouTube channel on Thursday, July 16 regarding the candidate’s selection for the final process. After getting over a million entries from 249 nations, Maezawa explained in the 5:33 video that they are currently in the final phases of evaluating who would be joining him on his lunar mission.

A ballet dancer with a Ph.D. in Atomic and Laser Physics from Oxford, a Pulitzer-winning photojournalist, an LGBTQ spokesperson for the European Parliament, and others were included in the video he published on his channel on YouTube. It also included Tim Dodd “The Astronaut” and famous DJ Steve Aoki, who explained why they should join Yusaku Maezawa’s 8-person lunar mission.

About dearMoon Mission by SpaceX

The “dearMoon” mission will go to the moon in 3 days, loop around it in orbit for 3 days, and then come back within 3 days (everything will happen in 3 days’ time period). Musk further said that, in addition to being the first private lunar trip, the rocket’s flight path implies it will travel far beyond the Apollo missions. “We intend people to go far on this trip than any person has ever gone from planet Earth,” Musk stated.

Yusaku Maezawa is leading the mission, which is known as dearMoon, and has spent an unknown price for realization of his ambition of traveling to the moon. However, we haven’t got much of an idea who he would invite along for the dearMoon project, which he planned to be something like toward a civilian art project till now. Since it was initially announced in 2018, the mission has evolved significantly. Maezawa intended to get artists aboard the Starship and take them on a cycle around Earth’s sole natural satellite with him. However, early this year, he modified the procedure and made spaces available to almost everyone. He did it by encouraging “aspiring lunar explorers” to register for a ticket onboard the Starship and then create videos explaining why they would like to go with him.

Starship Project

Since Maezawa first announced dearMoon, over 2.5 years are now passed, and the team is remained committed launching the mission in 2023. SpaceX has kept developing Starship during this period. The rocket is a cutting-edge vehicle that is essential to Musk’s aspirations of space travel.

Musk wants Starship to land and launch again in a manner more like a commercial aircraft in order to make it totally reusable, not just the booster, which is the bottom part of the rocket. SpaceX has not yet used a Starship rocket to enter orbit, but at its facility in Boca Chica, Texas, it is building and testing prototypes quickly.

Multiple Starship prototypes have been successfully launched by the business, and they were all securely landed after just brief flights up to a height of 500 feet. Despite reaching several development milestones, its two most recent high-altitude flights burst on contact during attempted landings.

Although Musk originally predicted that the Starship program would cost SpaceX roughly $5 billion to finish, the business has not disclosed how much it has spent on it yet. Notably, SpaceX’s market value has increased significantly since Maezawa’s first declaration, rising from roughly $25 billion at the time to about $74 billion during the subsequent month.

Maezawa gave an update on some of the applicants whose videos had impressed him on Thursday. He claims that there were over a million applications, essentially from “every single country” on earth. There are professional ballet dancers, actresses, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers, artists, Olympians, and, yes, DJ Steve Aoki is also present. The crowd is extremely eclectic. The candidates haven’t chosen formally yet, and Maezawa hasn’t said when he would make such a declaration. But this is the first sign of who may get a sought-after position on the moon’s orbital return mission.

Interesting Information

Before the expedition in March 2021, the wealthy entrepreneur had also tried to build a “matchmaking” TV program aimed at finding a girlfriend that will accompany him to the moon. Maezawa dropped the project after receiving a lot of backlashes online. Given Richard Branson’s recent trip to the edge of space in a Virgin Galactic spacecraft and former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ scheduled to launch from Earth. It looks that now is a good time to have gathered enough wealth to leave earth for a bit. However, critics of the so-called “billionaire space race” have labeled the missions “ego ventures” and declared them scientifically pointless. Maezawa’s appeal has a few more years to go.

Sources: Cnbc.com  Observer.com  Cnet.com  Cnet.com  Tesmanian.com  Sciencetimes.com