SpaceX names first rocket tourist as Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa

The first private tourist to travel on the SpaceX trip around the moon has been named as Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will be the world’s first space tourist.

SpaceX has named the first private tourist on its trip around the moon as Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.

Mr Maezawa, a 42-year-old online fashion tycoon and art collector was revealed to cheers and applause at an event at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

“I choose to go to the Moon,” he said after being introduced by the aerospace company’s CEO Elon Musk.

Mr Maezawa, the 18th richest person in Japan with a fortune of $3 billion, said he would invite six to eight artists, architects, designers and other creative people on theweeklong journey to circumnavigate the moon. He said he wanted his fellow passengers to be inspired to create once they return to Earth.

Elon Musk snames Yusaku Maezawa as the first private passenger on a SoaceX trip around the moon. Picture: AP

The company said the flight, which will take place in 2023, would be “an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of travelling to space.”

It said the journey, which wouldn’t involve a landing but a long loop around the moon would last about a week. It would get as close as 200km (125 miles) from the moon’s surface before returning to earth.

Lasting about a week, the journey will come as close as 125 miles to the Moon’s surface before completing lunar transit and returning back to Earth. pic.twitter.com/1P4HSHxaNU

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 18, 2018

The mission will use a huge rocket that is still in development, but has its own dedicated passenger ship. The rocket, dubbed BFR, has not been built so any flight presumably is at least several years away.

On its website, SpaceX is touting the “first passenger on lunar BFR mission,” implying there will be more moon trips.

SpaceX’s next generation vehicle—BFR—will be the most powerful rocket in history, capable of carrying humans to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. https://t.co/gtC39uBC7z pic.twitter.com/urQDbdTK94

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 18, 2018

In an original plan the company was arranging to use the Falcon Heavy rocket - the most powerful rocket flying today - and a Dragon crew capsule similar to the one NASA astronauts will use to fly to the International Space Station as early as next year.

Astronauts last visited the moon during NASA’s Apollo program. Twenty-four men flew to the moon from 1968 through 1972 and half of them made it to the lunar surface.

The space agency is planning its own lunar fly-by with a crew around 2023. It also aims to build a staffed gateway near the moon during the 2020s. The outpost would serve as a stepping-off point for the lunar surface, Mars and points beyond.

SpaceX has had a string of successful rocket launches, but that has been overshadowed by the struggles of Mr Musk’s Tesla electric car company to deliver, and his behaviour.

He recently criticised analysts during a Tesla earnings conference call, is being sued by a British diver in the recent Thai cave rescue drama for calling him a pedophile, took a hit off an apparent marijuana-tobacco joint during a podcast interview and tweeted that he had funding to take Tesla private but then announced the deal was off.

Two senior executives announced departures from Tesla, and the diver sued Mr Musk on Monday. Last month he told the New York Times he was overwhelmed by job stress.