A Japanese tycoon Yusaku Maezawa and his producer became the first self-paying space travelers in more than a decade on Wednesday.
Along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, fashion billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and producer Yozo Hirano, who wants to record his voyage, blasted out for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
The three rocketed from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur launch pad at 12:38 p.m. (01:08 p.m. IST) atop a Soyuz MS-20 rocket.
Maezawa and Hirano will be in space for a total of 12 days. Since 2009, the two will be the first self-paying visitors to the space station. The cost of the vacation is not revealed.
“I would like to look at the Earth from space. I would like to experience the opportunity to feel weightlessness,” Maezawa said during a pre-flight news conference on Tuesday. “And I also have a personal expectation; I’m curious how the space will change me, how I will change after this space flight.”
According to the corporation that planned the mission, Maezawa likewise developed a list of 100 activities to do in space after soliciting suggestions from the public. According to Space Adventures President Tom Shelley, the list then covers “simple things about daily life to maybe some other fun activities, to more serious questions as well.”
“He intends to try to share the experience of what it means to be in space with the general public,” Shelley says to The Associated Press earlier this year.
Maezawa made his fortune in the retail fashion industry by founding Zozotown, Japan’s largest online fashion mall. Forbes magazine estimated his net worth to be $2 billion.
Elon Musk also has plans for a flyby around the moon on his Starship. It is provisionally scheduled for 2023. On that journey, he’ll also join eight contest winners.
