Japanese fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa, who signed up to be SpaceX’s first
customer to fly to the moon aboard a Starship spacecraft in 2023, has been
looking for a few like-minded space enthusiasts to join him on the
voyage—all expenses paid. The search is now in the final stage of screening
as the billionaire has narrowed the selection down to just 20 finalists.
Maezawa is the founder of Japanese fast fashion giant Zozotown. An avid art
collector, Maezawa limited the search to artists. But the definition is
loose. “Every single person who is doing something creative with their
lives, aren’t they all artists?…If you see yourself as an artist, then you
are an artist,” the entrepreneur said in March when announcing the search,
dubbed Project dearMoon.
Four months and more than a million applications later, Maezawa has set his
eye on 20 people. “Coming close to the end of the selection process for
dearMoon!” he wrote in an Instagram post on July 15.
A YouTube video posted by Maezawa the same day featured a selection of
applicants explaining what they hoped to accomplish on the trip. The
finalists span a wide range of artistic professions, including painters,
dancers, DJs, photographers and even Olympics gold medalists.
“I would consider this to be the most ambitious and probably one of the
greatest artistic collaborations ever,” one of the 20 finalists, Vancouver
artist Boris Moshenkov, said in an Instagram video last month. “That’s what
gives me goosebumps every time I think about the project.”
Tracy Fanara, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) who creates space-themed art in her free time, was in
the final round.
“I did not sleep for like six weeks going through the process,” Fanara told
DailyMail. “Lets just say, going through the process and getting to each
step is just crazy. To think you might actually be apart of something so
much bigger than yourself.”
These 20 finalists will compete for eight seats on the SpaceX flight. Also
flying along will be a few SpaceX employees, making the total crew 10 to 12
people.
The civilian crew will not actually land on the moon, but flying around it.
It will take them three day to reach the moon, less than one day to loop
around it, and three days to return to Earth.
Maezawa signed up to be SpaceX’s first moon passenger in September 2018 and
reportedly put down a hefty deposit. He is expected to fly in a Starship
spacecraft, which is being tested to reach Earth’s orbit.