Japanese Billionaire to Take Eight People into Space

Credit: Unsplash

Yusaku Maezawa would like his voyage to the stars to be a little less lonely.

A couple of years ago, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk offered private citizens the opportunity to fly into space on an actual rocket. Of course, fitting such a grand voyage, the tickets were prohibitively expensive, to the point that very few people could actually afford one. One of those few was Yusaku Maezawa, CEO of Japanese fashion company Zozo and a classic eccentric billionaire. Originally, Maezawa was going to take this voyage with a lady friend, which is why last year he opened applications for women to take a space date with him, but he cancelled the plan after 27,000 women applied and things got kind of weird.


Maezawa announced today that he is once again taking applications for passengers on his SpaceX voyage, though this time around he’s not looking for romantic partners. Rather, he wants six to eight people with a love of creativity and beauty. He originally requested specifically arists, but he decided to broaden the terms a bit to those who enjoy expressing themselves and the beauty of the world.

“I wanted to reach out to a wider more diverse audience,” he said in a statement. “If you see yourself as an artist then you are an artist.”

Maezawa is accepting applications to join him for this voyage, titled “dearMoon,” on his website. Maezawa has purchased all available seats on the flight, so aside from mission-vital SpaceX crew, it’ll be only him and his guests aboard the vessel, around 12 people in total. Maezawa’s precise criteria on which he’ll be selecting his passengers has not been divulged, though since SpaceX’s public mission isn’t supposed to run until 2023, he’ll have plenty of time to make his choices.

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