Space Adventures Sending Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, Production Assistant to ISS in December
VIENNA, Va., May 13, 2021 (Space Adventures PR) — Space Adventures, Inc., the world’s leading space experiences company, announced that Yusaku Maezawa has begun preparations for a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) by successfully passing the required medical examinations. He and his production assistant, Yozo Hirano, are planning to launch on the Russian Soyuz MS-20 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on December 8, 2021.
The duration of the spaceflight will be 12 days and will be commanded by Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin. Mr. Maezawa and his crew will begin approximately three months of spaceflight training in June at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.
“I’m so curious ‘what’s life like in space’? So, I am planning to find out on my own and share with the world on my YouTube channel,” said Yusaku Maezawa.
“We are excited for Maezawa-san, and we are honored to have enabled this opportunity for him to fly to space,” said Eric Anderson, Chairman and CEO of Space Adventures, Inc. “He will be flying on the respected Soyuz spacecraft, visiting the space station as have our previous space flight participant (SFP) clients. This is the first time two SFPs will fly together, and the first tourist mission to the ISS in a decade! Welcome to space, Yusaku!”
Space Adventures has been cooperating with Roscosmos since the world’s first space tourist flight in 2001. In total, seven self-funded individuals have visited the space station and Mr. Maezawa plans to be the 8th and the first from Japan.
About Yusaku Maezawa
Yusaku Maezawa, CEO of Start Today, Ltd., is a Japanese e-commerce entrepreneur and world-renowned art collector. He founded ZOZO, Ltd., a publicly traded online retail clothing business, which he sold to Yahoo! Japan in 2019. Along with the Soyuz MS-20 mission to the ISS, he also plans to participate in a circumlunar mission onboard SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft currently scheduled to launch in 2023.
About Yozo Hirano
Yozo Hirano joined ZOZO, Ltd. after graduating from university where he became the casting director of the photography team. Currently, he is working at SPACETODAY as a film producer. On the ISS, Mr. Hirano will be responsible for documenting Mr. Maezawa’s mission.
About Space Adventures
Space Adventures organized the flights for the world’s first private astronauts (Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Anousheh Ansari, Charles Simonyi, Richard Garriott and Guy Laliberté) and today offers a variety of spaceflight missions to low-Earth orbit, the International Space Station, and beyond.
11 responses to “Space Adventures Sending Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, Production Assistant to ISS in December”
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I’m surprised Musk didn’t give him a package deal. Iirc, that had even been discussed (getting an initial LEO space experience through the Dragon), but maybe I’m misremembering that.
Anyway, a good move for Mr. Maezawa, I’d think. Don’t want to be halfway to the Moon before you figure out this space flight thing isn’t for you (motion sickness, claustrophobia, bathrooming, space food, no showers, scary noises, launch and re-entry Gs, the vast emptiness, nothing to do, away from friends and family, etc.)
SpaceX seems to have too much demand for the limited number of Crew Dragon flights available. IIRC they are planning to build 5 Crew Dragons with a current maximum of 5 flights each. So with the flights already reserved for NASA, Axiom, Space Adventures and Inspiration4 so far. There isn’t that many flights left.
Also the timing isn’t good for a Crew Dragon to be available near the end of 2021. Dragonships Resilience and Endeavour will be refurbishing from the Inspiration4 and Crew-2 missions for the Space Adventures high LEO mission and the first Axiom ISS mission. Plus an unnamed Dragonship will be docked at the ISS. So it appears that all the available Dragonships have been assigned.
P.S. Musk refers the capsules as Dragonships
The original circumlunar trip Yusaku Maezawa was discussing with SpaceX was with a Crew Dragon modified for longer endurance to be launched on a Falcon Heavy. Elon convinced him to wait for Starship instead.
Perhaps Maezawa-san is just being frugal. Axiom has already sewn up much of the Crew Dragon 2’s non-NASA availability for the next two or three years and they’re charging $55 million for a seat on one of their jaunts to ISS. I’m sure the Soyuz was significantly cheaper.
the babes are prettier
Being prettier than Maezawa-san is not a very high bar to get over.
Heh
Perhaps he doesn’t want to wait until the end of the decade which may be how long it takes for a safe manned version of Starship to be built.
On the contrary, I think he’s looking to get in a bit of practice spaceflight – now that the opportunity has presented itself – so that he’s an old space pro of recent provenance when Dear Moon is ready to go roughly two years hence. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Maezawa does a Charles Simonyi and gets in a second jaunt to LEO before embarking on Dear Moon.
Gonna be crowded up there with all these private flights. I wonder how all the professional astronauts are going to feel about playing nurse-maid to all those people? still at least there will be a bit of eye-candy (yes I am that shallow)
Me too.