Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has chosen the people who will go with him on SpaceX’s first private lunar flight. Among them are a singer, photographer, DJ, choreographer and other creative people.

In total, the billionaire chose 8 people to accompany him on his travels. It:

• Choi Seung Hyun, better known as TOP, is a singer from the Korean boy band BIGBANG;
• DJ Steve Aoki;
• Photographer and host of the Everyday Astronaut YouTube channel, Tim Dodd;
• Irish photographer Rhiannon Adam;
• Designer and choreographer Yemi Akiniem;
• Director who shot projects for National Geographic, Brendan Hall;
• Director Karim Ilya (filmed projects about endangered species of animals);
• Indian actor Dev D. Joshi.

Meanwhile, snowboarder Caitlin Farrington and Japanese dancer Miya were taken to the reserve crew.

The dearMoon project

The project, called dearMoon, was launched in 2018 after Maezawa purchased all seats for a six-day trip to the moon from SpaceX. The billionaire announced the recruitment of tourists with a short video, inviting everyone who wanted to participate in it.

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In total, 10 to 12 people will take part in the flight, with eight crew members chosen “from the people”. These are people who have no training at all (not military, former astronauts or pilots). The billionaire will fully pay for everyone’s participation in the expedition.

In 2020, Maezawa also decided to organize a reality show to find a life partner for a trip to the moon, but ended up changing his mind and canceling everything.

According to Maezawa, the project received about a million applications from interested individuals from around the world, who then went through a “rigorous selection process.” Such a creative composition of the team is not surprising, since the billionaire initially planned to take artists with him on a moon trip to inspire them to create something that would “contribute to world peace.”

Yusuke Maezawa didn’t say why he decided to take the singer on the trip, but TOP once wore a space suit in his music video. This is the only connection of the Korean star with space so far.

The entire crew will go to the moon, probably in 2023 (although the actual date depends on the development of the Starship) and will last 6-7 days: 3 days are needed just to reach the moon and return to Earth.

Since May 2021, when Starship SN15 made its first fully successful altitude flight, SpaceX has adjusted the schedule and postponed the first orbital flight many times. At the end of September, after SpaceX first conducted fire tests of the 70-meter Super Heavy Booster 7 rocket with 7 Raptor methane engines, Elon Musk announced in another update that the preliminary launch is planned for late October-November 2022. And now the schedule has “moved” for another month. SpaceX, as before, plans to use a pair of Starship SN24 and Super Heavy B7 for the first orbital flight.

Yusaku Maezawa is a Japanese billionaire and art collector, his fortune is estimated at two billion dollars. He earned them through the online clothing store Zozotown, which he founded in 1998 and left in 2019 after selling a controlling stake to SoftBank. Yusaku had previously flown to the ISS to prepare for the dearMoon mission. There, the billionaire spent 12 days filming a birth story about life in space.

In October, another businessman, 82-year-old American Dennis Tito, announced that he had purchased 2 of the 12 seats (for himself and his wife) on the second private flight to the moon on Starship. Previously, Tito became the first person in the world, a non-professional astronaut, who went into space at his own expense.

SpaceX announced the second private flight to the moon on Starship: 2 passenger seats out of 12 available were bought by American businessman Dennis Tito, who had previously visited the ISS

SpaceX also contracted with NASA to land the first man on the moon as part of the Artemis program. Before the space agency finally launched the Space Launch System rocket as part of the Artemis I mission, the Orion spacecraft with mannequins on board flew by the satellite and is now returning to Earth. It is expected to land off the coast of San Diego on December 11.

The Orion spacecraft of the Artemis 1 mission has turned on its engines and is returning to Earth. This was preceded by a power failure

It should be noted that throughout history, 24 people – astronauts who participated in the American space program “Apollo” – flew to the moon. Moreover, after the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, when the Americans landed on the Earth’s satellite for the sixth time, no one else flew to the moon.