The SpaceX Starship prototype, flying high above the launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas
SpaceX
In 2023, will civilians fly around the moon for the first time? According Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, the answer is yes. He is funding the DearMoon mission, which aims to take a group of eight people to the moon in The SpaceX starship still in development and take a tour around the Earth’s natural satellite on a six-day mission.
The project, announced by Maezawa and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in 2018, originally planned to invite artists from all over the world to experiment. The criteria for “artists” were never clearly defined, but on Tuesday, in a new promotional video for the mission, Maezawa announced that DearMoon would be open to just about everyone worldwide.
“I started to think that maybe every person who is doing something creative could be called an artist,” he says in the video, which you can see below.
Maezawa describes “two main criteria” for civilian passengers. They also seem quite flexible.
- “Whatever activity you engage in, when you go to space, I hope you can go further, to help other people and society in some way.”
- “You have to be willing and able to support other crew members who share similar aspirations.”
In total, Maezawa says 10 to 12 people will be on board for the first flight around the moon. The billionaire entrepreneur also started to develop a “Matchmaking” TV show about finding a girlfriend he could take to the moon on the mission, but Maezawa canceled the project shortly after its announcement.
Musk makes an appearance in the video to explain that the mission hopes to take people “further than any human has ever been from planet Earth” because he will fly past the moon and take a walk around it to return home.
Musk says he is “highly confident” that the Starship will have reached orbit “many, many times” before 2023 and that it will be “safe enough for human transport” by the time the mission is scheduled to launch. Musk has a tendency to make this kind of statement before and miss a deadline or also, and the starship prototypes have yet to make a successful landing. The next prototype is scheduled to fly and land this week – but it’s a long way to get to the moon and back.
The selection process has not yet been clearly defined for DearMoon, but the site’s schedule appears to have crew selection through July 2021. You can pre-register now and should hear more about the selection process at some point “after March 15, 2021. “
We contacted the DearMoon team to clarify the details.
Another SpaceX mission aims to send civilians into space soon. Known as Inspiration4, he plans to send humans to orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon, taking off on top of a Falcon 9. He is also being funded by a billionaire, Jared Isaacman, and he can fly before the end of the year.
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