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IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration

Japanese billionaire seeks 8 volunteers for SpaceX flight around the moon

• Market Watch

Wanna get away? A Japanese billionaire is looking for eight volunteers to fly to the moon with him on Elon Musk's spaceship.

"It will take three days to get to the moon, loop behind it, and three days to get back," Yusaku Maezawa said in a video Tuesday. "I will pay for the entire journey."

Applications are due by March 14, with initial screenings starting soon after. Final interviews and medical checkups are scheduled to be competed by late May.

The mission to fly around the moon and back — dubbed dearMoon — is scheduled for 2023 on a SpaceX Starship. Though the spacecraft is still in the early stages of testing, Musk says he's confident it will be ready in two years. The first two Starship test flights have ended in explosive crash landings.

Maezawa, an entrepreneur and art collector who founded the online fashion business Zozo 3092, -1.33% — which he sold to SoftBank 9984, +1.54% for $900 million in 2019 — bought the right to be SpaceX's first lunar tourist in 2018.

The flight will have 10-12 people in total, including the eight civilians. "I hope that together we can make it a fun trip," Maezawa said.


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