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SpaceX revealed Monday that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will be his first space tourist.
Maezawa chartered a flight on the Moon as early as 2023 aboard the company's Big Falcon Rocket. He plans to take six to eight artists for free with him.
"I want to share this experience and things with as many people as possible," Maezawa told a news conference. "So, I chose to go to the moon with artists."
The trip will take four to five days, said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
SpaceX announced its headquarters in Hawthorne, California, not far from where the Emmy Awards were presented in Los Angeles on Monday night.
Maezawa is a rock musician, online fashion mogul and, most recently, a leading art collector. A video presentation about him says he believes that art can help bring peace to the world.
He was wondering on stage what John Lennon, Coco Chanel, Michael Jackson or Andy Warhol would have created had they seen the Moon up close.
Maezawa, whose net worth is estimated at $ 2.9 billion by Forbes, plans to work with the SpaceX team to select its other passengers.
"If you hear from me, say yes," pleaded the Japanese mogul. He also encouraged Musk to join the mission.
"As far as I'm concerned, I'm not sure," Musk replied. "Maybe we'll both be on it."
Future announcements about the project, which Maezawa calls "#dearMoon," will be posted on a website and social media accounts of the same name.
The Japanese billionaire paid a deposit for the mission, but the financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"He puts his money where his mouth is," said Musk, describing the amount as "non trivial".
Maezawa made a fortune by creating Start Today, an ecommerce company that includes a popular online clothing site in Japan. Last year he attracted attention with the purchase of a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat for $ 110.5 million.
An ambitious timetable
Maezawa will fly on the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR, a new spacecraft system that SpaceX is building. It consists of a huge rocket propellant that promises to surpass everything that has already been built and an imposing spaceship, dubbed BFS for the Big Falcon Spaceship, that will come out of the Earth's atmosphere.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said at a conference in Washington Monday that she hoped the spacecraft would make short flights next year.
Shotwell also said that the rocket could reach orbit for the first time in 2020 and eventually ship cargo to the Moon or Mars in 2022.
"I know it sounds crazy, and we usually do not meet our deadlines, but I wanted you to know at least an order of magnitude, that's what we think," Shotwell said. "And it sounds crazy, but everything we did seemed crazy to people, both to people who love us and to people who do not like us very much."
Musk warned during the press conference that SpaceX was not certain of the 2023 calendar for the lunar tourism mission.
He said SpaceX had updated the design of the BFR rocket for the third time in three years. He showed pictures of the material under construction and a test fire of the massive Raptor engine of the vehicle.
The latest plans mark the latest major rocket overhaul, whose development is expected to cost about $ 5 billion, according to Musk.
Asked why the company made new changes, Musk said he did not like the aesthetics of the previous version. The new design, he added, "could be better," but "it's slightly more risky technically."
Mission of the space station next year
SpaceX has launched more than 60 missions to deliver cargo or satellites in orbit over the past eight years, all without anyone on board.
The tourism announcement comes as the company prepares to meet a tight deadline to begin flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station aboard its Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The United States has not been able to put humans into orbit since the end of the space shuttle era in 2011. Since then, NASA has relied on Russia to transport astronauts to the space station .
Mr Shotwell said Monday that SpaceX planned to conduct a test flight of a version of the Dragon capsule capable of carrying astronauts before the end of the year. It aims to launch its first crewed mission to the space station in the second quarter of 2019.
When will "ordinary people" visit space?
SpaceX has not talked much about putting citizens in space since February 2017. It's at this time that the company announced that it would send two paying customers when 39, a trip around the Moon in 2018 aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket, became the most powerful rocket in the world. after his maiden voyage earlier this year.
Musk then reversed the course, claiming that the company had no plans to certify the Falcon Heavy for manned flights.
SpaceX said it views space tourism as "an important step towards the access of ordinary people who dream of traveling in space".
Two of Musk's billionaires, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Richard Branson of Virgin Group, also want to do space tourism business.
Their projects plan to perform short suborbital trips during which passengers can briefly experience weightlessness and an expansive view of the Earth.
But it is not certain that space tourism becomes accessible to "ordinary people".
Virgin Galactic Branson has sold tickets for around $ 250,000, more than the median price of the United States. Blue Origin of Bezos was discreet about the price of its tickets, but Reuters announced in July that they could cost $ 200,000. Blue Origin denied the report to CNN, saying ticket prices had not yet been set.
Jackie Wattles, CNN Money
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