Meet Yusaku Maezawa, the Japanese billionaire who will be the first man to go to moon on Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket
Yusaku Maezawa, CEO of online fashion retailer Zozo, bought all the seats on board and hopes to blast-off accompanied by group of artists – possibly in 2023
Elon Musk, founder, CEO, and lead designer of the rocket company SpaceX revealed on Monday that the first private space traveller to fly around the moon will be a Japanese entrepreneur and billionaire.
Yusaku Maezawa, the founder and CEO of online fashion retailer Zozo, says he had bought all the seats on the first crewed flight of SpaceX’s new Big Falcon Rocket, which is being designed to colonise Mars.
The former drummer in a punk band is tentatively planning to make his moon flight in 2023.
Yusaku Maezawa is a very brave person to do this. This is going to be dangerous ... It’s not 100 per cent certain that we succeed in getting this to flight
He plans to select six to eight artists to accompany him on the journey, although they have not yet been selected.
His identity was revealed at an event on Monday evening at SpaceX’s headquarters and rocket factory in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne.
“He’s a very brave person to do this,” Musk said of the Japanese entrepreneur.
Maezawa, 42, who is the 18th richest person in Japan, is a keen art collector.
He says the artists on the rocket will be part of a project called #dearmoon, which will involve them creating work inspired by their lunar journey.
It is unclear exactly how much the moon’s first space tourist has paid for the seats on the lunar flight, although Musk says Maezawa is “paying a lot of money that would help with the ship and its booster”.
“He’s ultimately paying for the average citizen to travel to other planets,” says Musk, who is also CEO of the electric car maker, Tesla.