SpaceX 1st Moon Tourist chooses finalists who could fly aboard a spaceship

Japanese fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa, who signed up to be the first SpaceX client to travel to the moon aboard a Starship spacecraft in 2023, is looking for a few like-minded space enthusiasts to join him on the journey, all expenses paid. The research is now in the final stage of the selection as the billionaire narrowed the selection down to just 20 finalists.

Maezawa is the founder of Japanese fast fashion giant Zozotown. A great art collector, Maezawa limited the search to artists. But the definition is vague. “Every person who does something creative in their life, aren’t they all artists?… If you see yourself as an artist, then you are an artist,” the entrepreneur said in March during the announcement. research, dubbed Project dearMoon.

Four months and over a million applications later, Maezawa has set her sights on 20 people. “Approaching the end of the selection process for dearMoon!” He wrote in an Instagram post on July 15th.

A YouTube video posted by Maezawa the same day featured a selection of candidates explaining what they hoped to accomplish on the trip. The finalists cover a wide range of artistic professions including painters, dancers, DJs, photographers and even Olympic gold medalists.

“I would consider this the most ambitious and possibly one of the greatest artistic collaborations of all time,” one of the 20 finalists, Vancouver artist Boris Moshenkov, said in an Instagram video last month. “That’s what gives me goosebumps every time I think about the project.

Tracy Fanara, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist who creates space-themed art in her spare time, was in the final round.

“I didn’t sleep for about six weeks during the process,” Fanara told DailyMail. “Let’s just say going through the process and taking each step is just crazy. Thinking that you could actually be a part of something so much bigger than yourself.

These 20 finalists will compete for eight seats on the SpaceX flight. A few SpaceX employees will also be flying, making the total crew 10 to 12 people.

The civilian crew will not actually land on the moon, but will fly around it. It will take them three days to reach the Moon, less than a day to circle it and three days to return to Earth.

Maezawa signed up to be SpaceX’s first lunar passenger in September 2018 and reportedly filed a large deposit. It is expected to fly in a Starship spacecraft, which is being tested to reach Earth orbit, on top of a still-to-build Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) booster.