Image: SpaceX
SpaceX has announced that Japanese fashion entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa has purchased a flight around the moon on the company’s still-conceptual Big Falcon Rocket (BFR). Maezawa, who is also an avid art collector, says he will be offering six to eight artists free seats for the flight in the hope that they will be inspired to create work based on the trip. According to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, the deposit Maezawa has already made will go toward the development of the rocket.
Musk said that although the amount Maezawa paid for the flight will not be disclosed, it is enough to make a material impact on BFR development. The trip is tentatively scheduled for 2023, but Musk called that a “things go right” date, saying that it wasn’t even 100 percent certain that they could get the rocket flying, let alone on time for 2023. Development of the BFR is expected to cost roughly $5 billion.
Manufacture of the first prototype is already in progress, with first test flights planned for 2019. SpaceX says the BFR will have a payload of about 100 metric tons, be fully reusable, and is intended to eventually make trips to Mars and beyond. Although a maximum of twelve passengers will be onboard for the first flight, Musk says the BFR has room for as many as 100 people. It is also designed to land on a wide range of surfaces in a variety of atmospheres.
SpaceX announced in February of last year that it had taken a deposit on a flight around the moon for two previously unidentified individuals—during Monday’s announcement, Musk said that Maezawa was also the customer for that trip—on its Dragon spacecraft powered by the Falcon Heavy rocket. That flight was originally scheduled for 2018, was pushed back to at least mid-2019, and is now abandoned in favor of the BFR trip.
Musk said that SpaceX’s NASA and national security commitments remain the company’s priority, with less than 5 percent of SpaceX resources currently going towards BFR.
