Japan billionaire Maezawa to fulfil childhood dream with space flight

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Baikonur, Kazakhstan (Reuters) – Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa mentioned he might barely include his pleasure a day forward of blasting off to the International Space Station in a prelude to a extra bold journey across the moon with Elon Musk’s SpaceX deliberate in 2023. The 46-year-old style magnate and artwork collector has been coaching at a space centre exterior Moscow in latest months earlier than changing into the primary space vacationer to journey to the ISS in additional than a decade.

Maezawa will journey aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, which is able to launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, accompanied by his assistant Yozo Hirano, who will doc the journey, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin. Speaking from Baikonur forward of his 12-day space journey, Maezawa mentioned flying into space had been a childhood dream.

“I’m excited. I really feel like an elementary college scholar about to go on a outing,” Maezawa mentioned at a information convention. “I did not assume I’d have the option to go to space. I used to just like the starry sky and heavenly our bodies. I really feel lucky to have this chance and to lastly fulfil my dream.”

The billionaire has been chronicling his preparations, together with demonstrating his space go well with and driving a centrifuge, in social media posts, with plans to publish extra from space.

During his 100 days in coaching, Maezawa mentioned he had loved parabolic flight, the place weightlessness is induced for brief intervals on an tailored airplane, however discovered coaching in a spinning chair robust.

The entrepreneur, who was sporting a blue flight go well with with a badge studying “world peace”, mentioned he had struggled to be taught Russian to talk with his trainers and seemed ahead to consuming sushi when he returns to Earth.

Maezawa will change into the primary non-public passenger on the SpaceX moon journey, as industrial companies together with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin usher in a brand new age of space journey for rich shoppers. The billionaire, who bought his on-line style enterprise Zozo to SoftBank in 2019, is looking for eight individuals who will be a part of him in his moon voyage in 2023, requiring candidates to go medical checks and an interview.

Maezawa has change into a family identify in Japan by way of his penchant for personal jets and supercars, money giveaways to Twitter followers and movie star girlfriends in a rustic recognized for its conformist, company tradition.

Maezawa would be the first Japanese non-public citizen in space since TV journalist Toyohiro Akiyama visited the Mir space station in 1990.

(Reporting by Shamil Zhumatov in Baikonur; Additional reporting by Sam Nussey in Tokyo and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber in Moscow; Editing by Ana Nicolaci da Costa)



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