Japanese billionaire entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa speaks at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Michael Sheetz | CNBC
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced on Tuesday that he will choose eight members of the public to join him on a journey around the moon, scheduled to fly 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 SpaceX founder Elon Musk, said the plan has evolved from flying artists on a journey to orbit the moon.
His project, dubbed dearMoon, will now fly “10 to 12 people in total,” with eight of the crew coming from members of the public Maezawa plans to elect.
The billionaire says he will “pay for the whole trip” so that those who join him fly for free. Maezawa made his fortune setting up this fashion retail company Zozotown, from which he resigned in 2019 after selling a majority stake to SoftBank.
The dearMoon mission takes three days to fly to the moon, find out in orbit, and then return three days. Musk added that, in addition to its historic scoop as a private moon mission, the missile’s flight path means it goes beyond the distance traveled by the Apollo missions.
“We expect humans to go further on this mission than any human has ever left planet Earth,” said Musk.
The mission’s flight plan.
dearMoon
The dearMoon website states that “pre-registration” is open until March 14th. The pre-registration application asks for a name, country, e-mail address and a profile picture. An “initial screening” process will begin on March 21, with a “final interview and medical check” in late May.
There are two “main criteria” for any person applying to fly with Maezawa: first, that a prospective passenger can promote “whatever activity” they undertake “by going to space.”
“Could you go to space to do something even better, bigger?” Maezawa asked.
Second, the eight aspiring astronauts “must be willing and able to support other crew members who share the same ambitions,” he said.
Starship prototype SN9 is launched from the company’s development facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
SpaceX
It’s been nearly two and a half years since Maezawa made its original dearMoon announcement, and the project has met its 2023 launch target for the mission.
In the meantime, SpaceX has continued to develop Starship. The rocket represents a next-generation vehicle that holds the key to Musk’s dreams of space exploration.
Musk is aiming for Starship to be completely reusable – not just the booster, the bottom part of the rocket – by landing and relaunching it in a way that’s more like a commercial plane.
SpaceX has yet to reach Earth orbit with a Starship rocket, but it is rapidly building and testing prototypes at its facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The company has successfully launched multiple Starship prototypes and landed them safely after short flights of up to about 150 feet.
The two most recent high-altitude flights, despite passing multiple development milestones, exploded upon impact during landing attempts.
SpaceX has not disclosed how much it has spent on the Starship program so far, but Musk previously estimated that he expects it to cost the company about $ 5 billion to complete.
SpaceX’s valuation, in particular, has skyrocketed since Maezawa’s original announcement, from about $ 25 billion at the time to about $ 74 billion last month.
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