The Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa was skipped by the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday on a spatial vessel of Soyouz which leads him to the International Space Station for a 12-day trip.
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who regularly distributes money on Twitter to attract followers, plans to do the same from space. The 46-year-old fashion mogul took off from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday aboard a Soyuz spacecraft that took him to the International Space Station for a 12-day trip.
“I feel like a kid waiting for a school trip,” Maezawa said at a previous press conference. The founder of online clothing retailer Zozo Inc is Japan’s first space tourist. The trip is a prelude to a planned SpaceX trip to the moon, announced in 2018 by Maezawa and the founder of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Elon Musk.
As entrepreneurs usher in a new era in space, Miami-based tech mogul Lane Bess is also among those taking off this week aboard a rocket from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Maezawa, also the first space tourist to visit the ISS in more than a decade, has spent months tweeting about his planned trips beyond Earth’s atmosphere, using the social media
Platform to recruit other space tourists and even find a companion. with him on the lunar trip planned for 2023. The billionaire, who tends to share his life too much in tweets, will detail the results of the experiments requested by his fans on his YouTube channel of more than 770,000 subscribers. The mogul, who dropped out of college and joined a rock band before racking up his fortune, also posted footage of his workouts at a space center outside of Moscow.
The trip on the Russian Soyuz MS20 is estimated at more than $ 88 million for Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano, according to local media estimates. Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin will also be on board. “My dream is finally coming true,” said Maezawa, who returns to earth on December 20. Winners of billionaire’s online donations of up to 1 million yen ($ 8,800) usually receive them by wire transfer; this time, instead of a lottery, Maezawa promised that everyone who participates in the handout will win and receive a certain amount. a commercial orbiter by 2030.
In September, a SpaceX rocket sent four civilians into orbit, bolstering Musk’s aspirations to make human spaceflight more accessible. With a net worth of $ 3.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Maezawa is one of Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs, making headlines with celebrities and shopping sprees. It started to gain attention in 2016 when he bought a painting by JeanMichel Basquiat for $ 57.3 million and another for 110.5 million dollars the following year.
Zozo once grew to be one of the top retailers in Japan by lining up brands on its website and selling skin-tight suits to take tailor-made clothing measurements. But the breakneck pace of growth did not last. Maezawa left the management in 2019 after selling a stake in the company.
