SpaceX has just revealed on their webcast who will be the lucky first private passenger on the BFR to go around the moon in a weeklong trip. It is none other than the Japanese billionaire Yusaka Maezawa, a famous 42-year-old entrepreneur who is usually in Japan’s headlines.
The mission will take off in 2023 after BFR is ready and has been tested in unmanned missions.
As for Elon Musk, he said in last night’s event that Maezawa is one of the wealthiest people in Japan and that he came to SpaceX and proposed them that he would be the first man to fly on their rocket.
Maezawa is the CEO of Start Today Co., which was founded in 1998 as a CD sales business. He was in his 20s, playing drums in an indie rock band called Switch Style. The company was among the first e-commerce business in Japan and now runs Zozotown, a popular fashion mall. According to Forbes magazine, Maezawa’s wealth is estimated at $2.9 billion.
The name of Maezawa’s company was inspired by the title of an American punk band (Gorilla Biscuits) album. He is known to invest in art and collect works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, for which he paid hundreds of millions of dollars.
So, it is no surprise that Maezawa wants to go on that weeklong trip accompanied by creative people. He stated it on Twitter too:
“I choose to go to the moon, with artists.”
He explained that he wants to take with him six to eight artists, designers or architects and “inspire the dreamer in all of us,” adding that:
“I wish to create amazing works of art for humankind. Just thinking about it now gets my heart racing.”
He concluded that he often wondered what Basquiat would have created if he got to travel into space.
Doris’s passion for writing started to take shape in college where she was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper. Even though she ended up working in IT for more than 7 years, she’s now back to what he always enjoyed doing. With a true passion for technology, Doris mostly covers tech-related topics.