SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced on Monday that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will be the spaceflight company's first private passenger to take a trip around the Moon in 2023.
An event that unveiled the first lunar traveler since the last US Apollo mission in 1972 was planned for Monday at 6:00 p.m. (0100 GMT Tuesday) at SpaceX's headquarters and rocket factory in Hawthorne, California, in the middle of metropolitan Los Angeles.
Employees wait before the start of an event with SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk to announce the name of the person who would be the first private passenger on a trip around the Moon, September 17, 2018, in Hawthorne, California, US. /AP Photo
Maezawa, 42, will travel to the Moon aboard the company's forthcoming Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) spaceship, taking the race to commercialize space travel to new heights, according to SpaceX.
He will also invite six to eight artists, architects, designers and other creative people on the weeklong journey, saying that he wants his guests for the lunar orbit "to see the Moon up close, and the Earth in full view, and create work to reflect their experience."
However, he didn't immediately say who will be on his guest list for the spaceflight, but in response to a question from a reporter he said he'd consider inviting Musk.
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa speaks after SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk announced him as the person who would be the first private passenger on a trip around the moon, September 17, 2018, in Hawthorne, California, US. /AP Photo
Musk said the entrepreneur, founder of Japan's largest retail website and one the country's richest people, will pay "a lot of money" for the trip, but declined to disclose the exact amount.
According to Musk, the BFR is still in development and will make several unmanned test launches before it takes on passengers. The reusable 118-meter rocket will have its own dedicated passenger ship, with a maximum passenger capacity of 100, but the 2023 Moon trip may only take about 12 people.
The mission will not involve a lunar landing.
This artist's illustration shows the SpaceX Big Falcon Rocket passenger spacecraft, which has only been shown in designs and images so far. /Photo courtesy of SpaceX
The average distance from Earth to the Moon is about 382,500 kilometers. Astronauts' last visit to the Moon was during NASA's Apollo program. Twenty-four men flew to the Moon from 1968 through 1972 and half of them made it to the lunar surface.
NASA is planning its own lunar flyby with a crew around 2023. The US space agency also aims to build a staffed gateway near the Moon during the 2020s. The outpost would serve as a stepping-off point for the lunar surface, Mars and points beyond.
California-based SpaceX is headed by Elon Musk, an Internet entrepreneur and CEO of the Tesla electric car company. /File photo via AFP
Musk outlined a somewhat different SpaceX mission last year. He said then that two people who know each other approached the company about a weeklong flight to the moon and back. He had said that the trip would happen this year. Musk did not name the clients last year or say how much they would pay.
That original mission would have used a Falcon Heavy rocket – the most powerful rocket flying today – and a Dragon crew capsule similar to the one NASA astronauts will use to fly to the International Space Station as early as next year.
The era of space tourism began in 2001 when California businessman Dennis Tito paid for a journey on a Russian rocket to the International Space Station. The trip was organized by the Virginia-based company Space Adventures, which has since sent several more paying customers on spaceflights.
(Top image: The shape of SpaceX's Big Falcon Rocket shown in an artist's illustration /AFP Photo)