Named participants of the first tourist flight to the moon

Japanese billionaire, rappers, artists and bloggers will spend a week in lunar orbit

It seems that the expression: “As far as the moon” is losing its relevance. The natural satellite of our planet is getting closer, at least in theory. It became known that the crew of the first week-long tour around the moon was selected and approved. The Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who bought the trip, recruited various creative personalities for the company: an artist, photographers, bloggers, actors and a director. Women were not taken on a flight, but the ladies are listed as understudies.

For the first time, the “mission to the moon” was seriously discussed 5 years ago. Then, no less eccentric than the space tourist Maezawa, the head of Space X, Elon Musk, announced that he had sold the first ticket “on a tour” to the moon. The carrier with the world’s first lunar tourist will be accelerated by a new rocket from BFR (they also plan to use it someday in a mission to Mars). And he will fly to the Moon on the SpaceX Starship (it is also in the project so far). The capacities of the new ships are attributed to such that one can only wonder: accommodation for up to 1000 people on board and up to 1000 tons of cargo, a bow “cabin” of 1000 square meters. meters…

However, so far, the first lunar tourist managed to fill space maps into tablets only on the ISS. In 2021, Maezawa has not yet “got the moon out of the sky”, but he has been in space. Its launch to the ISS took place with the participation of the Soyuz 2.1a rocket and on the Soyuz spacecraft, and the crew included Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin and the billionaire’s assistant, Japanese Ezo Hirano.

Perhaps it was then that Maezawa, who made his fortune in the clothing industry, liked to fly not alone. The team that he chose for himself for a week-long space voyage around the moon cannot be called boring. It includes Steve Aoki, an American DJ, producer and performer. Tim Dodd is an American space blogger and science popularizer. Yemi A.D. is an artist and choreographer from the Czech Republic. Photographers Karim Iliya from the UK and Rhiannon Adam from Ireland. Brendan Hall is a US documentary filmmaker. Indian actor and blogger Dev Joshi and South Korean rapper, model and actor Choi Seung Hyun. The understudy of the project was dancer Miyu from Japan and American snowboarder Kathleen Farrington.

Maybe someone will find the choice, in which there is not a single scientist or at least an emergency specialist (you never know what?), It will seem strange. But Yusaku Maezawa had previously warned that he would recruit only creative people into his crew. They say that it is their view of the moon that will benefit talent, and therefore all of humanity. #dearMoon Project is what a Japanese man calls his upcoming trip.

But, as you know, they wait for the promised three years, and sometimes much longer. Elon Musk calls 2023 the earliest date for the implementation of the lunar tour project. He is opposed by the lunar tourism project, and not only by Space Adventures, in which our RSC Energia and a couple of other projects participate. They just don’t sell tickets yet.

In the field of space tourism, we, as you know, Roskosmos are ahead of the rest. Since 1990, it has been rolling willing and solvent (and still passed a medical examination, which is important) tourists into low Earth orbit. And the first there were the Japanese Toyohiro Akiyama and the British Helen Sharman. Their flight was listed as commercial, but both were professional astronauts. And the first civilian on board the ISS was American financier Dennis Tito. And already further, who only has not been in space, including actress Yulia Peresild. In the “fat tenths” it was even planned to build a “space hotel” for tourists in the form of an orbital station. But not before it – the project was quietly covered up due to underfunding.