Elon Musk and SpaceX announce 1st tourist for ‘moon loop’
Deborah Byrd in HUMAN WORLD | September 18, 2018

Musk said Monday from SpaceX headquarters in California that it will send Japanese billionaire and online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa – with a group of artists – on a loop around the moon and back to Earth in 2023.


On Monday (September 17, 2018), Elon Musk’s company SpaceX unveiled its plans to send the first private passenger around the moon. The passenger will be Japanese billionaire and online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa, 42. The mission is planned for 2023, and, if all goes according to plan, will be the first journey to the moon by humans since 1972.

The announcement was made at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

Maezawa (@yousuck2020 on Twitter) is the founder of Zozotown, Japan’s largest online fashion mall. His net worth is $2.9 billion, according to Forbes. He is also an art enthusiast and said he planned to invite six to eight artists from around the world to accompany him on his trip to the moon, drawing them from a global pool of painters, photographers, musicians, film directors, fashion designers, and architects. He said they’d be asked to “create something” on the return to Earth, adding for reporters:

These masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us.