Tycoon’s ‘fly me to the moon’ proposal

A Japanese billionaire has issued an open invitation to pay for eight people to join him on the first private flight to the moon.

Yusaku Maezawa. Picture: AFP

A Japanese billionaire has issued an open invitation to pay for eight people to join him on the first private flight to the moon and beyond.

Yusaku Maezawa, a 45-year-old online retail tycoon, is to become the first paying passenger to travel around the moon on the SpaceX project due to be launched in two years by American entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Mr Maezawa is inviting eight others from all over the world to apply to be his companions.

“Whatever activity you are into, by going into space I hope you can push its envelope to help other people and greater society in some way,” he said in a video posted on the website of his project, called dearMoon.

“By going to space, you do something that’s even better, even bigger. If that sounds like you, please join.”

Initial applications are to be made online and final interviews and medical checkups for the eight people selected are to take place by May. The 11-day flight, planned for 2023, will not land on the moon but will fly beyond it, affording views of the satellite and Earth.

“I thought there might be delays but everything is on schedule,” Mr Maezawa said.

In November, Mr Musk’s Falcon 9 rocket carried four astronauts to the International Space Station. Two other proto­types have exploded during testing.

Mr Maezawa originally invited applications from single women in the hope of finding a girlfriend. After receiving 30,000 applications, he changed his mind and said he would instead take “artists” into space. Now he has changed his mind again.

Mr Maezawa was estimated last year to be worth $US2bn, making him Japan’s 22nd richest person. In 2017, he broke art sale records by paying $US110m for a painting by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. He has not revealed how much he paid Mr Musk for the berths on ­SpaceX, but says it was more than the cost of that painting.

The Times