A couple days ago, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced that Yusaku Maezawa, will be the first private customer to ride around the Moon on the company’s Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) as early as 2023.

Yusaku won’t be alone, however. The Japanese billionaire and founder of Zozotown, Japan’s largest online clothing retailer, wants to take eight artists from around the world with him to turn the entire ride into an art project called #dearMoon.

“Finally, I can tell you that I choose to go to the Moon! I choose to go to the moon with artists!” Yusaku said at a SpaceX event.

To the moon and back

All eight artists will fly for free because Yusaku, who’s also an avid art collector, has paid a substantial (and undisclosed) down payment, apparently buying out the entire flight. The news has already set creatives abuzz, with some responding to Musk’s Twitter thread, asking him to “pick me please.”

The chosen artists will be asked to create something after they return to Earth that will inspire the dreamer within everyone. And while Yusaku says he hasn’t decided which artists he’d like to invite yet, he would like them to represent different fields, such as painters, musicians, film directors, and more. When asked why, he said he was inspired by imagining what his favourite artists would have created if they had traveled to space.

“What if Picasso had gone to the Moon? Or Andy Warhol or Michael Jackson or John Lennon? What about Coco Chanel? These are all artists that I adore.”

The mission, which is scheduled for 2023, will send the individuals looping around the moon but not landing on it.

This isn’t the first time that SpaceX has announced plans to send a paying customer to the Moon. In February 2017, Musk proclaimed that two individuals had each put down a significant deposit to fly around the Moon on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, a larger version of the Falcon 9. No details about the passengers were given, though Musk said it was “nobody from Hollywood.” The flight was slated to occur before the end of this year, however, it was ultimately scrapped.

To learn more about the #dearMoon mission, you can visit the website here.

Source: https://www.space.com/41854-spacex-unveils-1st-private-moon-flight-passenger.html