Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa said he could hardly contain the excitement on the eve of the launch. International Space Station Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to make a prelude to a more ambitious journey around the moon in 2023.
The 46-year-old fashion tycoon and art collector has been training at a space center outside Moscow, and later became the first space tourist to the International Space Station in more than a decade.
Yusaku Maezawa will board the Soyuz spacecraft operated by the Russian Space Agency, which will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday. His assistant Yozo Hirano and Russian astronaut Alexander Misulkin will record the journey.
Before the 12-day voyage, Maezawa Yusaku said in a speech in Baikonur that flying into space was his childhood dream.
“I’m very excited. I feel like an elementary school student about to go out on an outing,” Maezawa Yusaku said at the press conference. “I don’t think I can go to space. I used to like stars and celestial bodies. I am lucky to have this opportunity and finally realize my dream.”
The billionaire has been recording his preparations on social media, including showing his spacesuit and driving a centrifuge, and plans to release more information from space.
During his 100-day training, Maezawa said that he likes parabolic flight. In this kind of flight, weightlessness can be caused in a short time on the modified aircraft, but he found that training on a rotating chair is difficult.
The entrepreneur, wearing a blue flight suit and the badge with “World Peace” written on it, said that he has been working hard to learn Russian to communicate with his instructor and is looking forward to eating sushi when he returns to Earth.
Roscosmos has a seat in its Soyuz launch and has been increasing its number of civilian travel this year. In October, it sent an actor and a film director to the station, where they filmed the scenes for the first film on the track.
Yusaku Maezawa will also be the first private passenger on SpaceX’s moon landing, because commercial companies including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have opened a new era of space travel for wealthy customers.
The billionaire sold his online fashion business Zozo to SoftBank in 2019. He is looking for eight people to join his moon voyage in 2023, requiring applicants to pass medical examinations and interviews.
Qian Ze has become a household name Japan Through his preference for private jets and supercars, he gave cash to Twitter fans and celebrity partners in a country known for its conformist corporate culture.
Maesawa will become the first Japanese citizen to enter space since TV reporter Toyohiro Akiyama visited the Mir space station in 1990.
