Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa won’t be shooting for the moon with SpaceX’s Starship after all.
Maezawa, who booked a private trip around the moon on SpaceX’s Starship megarocket in 2018, has now abandoned the project – which he called dearMoon – after the rocket was not ready to fly with him and eight selected artists in 2023.
“I signed the contract in 2018 based on the assumption that dearMoon will launch by the end of 2023,” Maezawa said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter). “It’s a development project, so it is what it is, but it’s not yet certain when Starship can launch.”
SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy booster represent the world’s tallest and most powerful rocket ever to fly. The company launched its first uncrewed Starship test flight in April 2023, but it failed to reach space. The second test in November 2023 flew higher but also failed. The Starship reached space for the first time on March 14 this year in a test that reached orbital velocity, but its Starship and Super Heavy booster did not survive to the intended drop points.
SpaceX is preparing to launch its fourth Starship test flight on June 5 as part of its development of a crewed Starship to land NASA’s Artemis astronauts on the Moon by 2026.
Maezawa said uncertainty about when the Starship would be ready to fly its dearMoon mission prompted him to cancel the flight.
“I can’t plan my future in this situation and I feel terrible making crew members wait longer, hence the difficult decision to cancel at this time,” Maezawa wrote on X. “I apologize to those who were excited for this project to happen.”
In December 2022, Maezawa selected a team of eight artists and creatives to join him on his expensive flight to the moon, but the dreams of the astronaut hopefuls have been dashed. The crew included: Tim Dodd, creator of the Everyday Astronaut YouTube channel; DJ and electronic music producer Steve Aoki; artist and choreographer Yemi AD; photographer Karim Ilia; director Brendan Hall; Indian television actor Dev Joshi; and South Korean rapper TOP Two backup team members, dancer Miyu and snowboarder Caitlin Farrington, were also selected.
Maezawa also held a short-lived girlfriend competition to find a partner to fly around the moon with him on the dearMoon flight, but it was canceled shortly after its announcement.
“And just like that, my crew’s dreams are over,” Dodd wrote to X after Maezawa announced dearMoon’s cancellation.
“I am extremely disappointed as I have dreamed of this mission since I first heard in 2018 and even more so in the last 3 years since the selection process began. I slowly allowed myself to imagine a trip to the moon little by little,” Dodd added. “On the other hand, I feel guilty about being upset about a gift that was revoked. Part of me doesn’t think I have a right to grieve because I had no right to this mission in the first place.”
Dodd said he probably would have had second thoughts about joining the project if he had known it could be canceled so soon after it was announced.
“If I had known this could end within a year and a half of it being publicly announced, I never would have gone along with it,” Dodd said. “We had no prior information about this possibility.”
When Maezawa announced the dearMoon mission in 2018, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company’s Starship program (which had been announced just two years earlier) would need about $5 billion to get up and running. with Maezawa contributing a key part of this funding. SpaceX has since secured a contract with NASA to land the agency’s Artemis 3 astronauts on the moon by 2026, as well as an unmanned landing test.
American billionaire Jared Isaacman, meanwhile, booked Starship’s first crewed orbital flight as part of his three-mission Polaris program, which also aims to carry out the first private spacewalk on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule later this year. SpaceX has also booked another private Starship trip around the moon for billionaire Dennis Tito and his wife Akiko. Tito became the world’s first space tourist when he bought a trip to the International Space Station through Space Adventures in 2001.
To get to the moon, SpaceX said it would take at least “a dozen” refueling missions just to power the Starship for a trip to the moon (the company has yet to reach a full orbit with the Starship or demonstrate a fully refueled flight , although it tested the refueling technology on its third Starship test flight in March.
Maezawa didn’t wait for the Starship to be ready at its target to reach space. In December 2021, he flew with himself and a videographer to the International Space Station for a 12-day journey. He said he wishes SpaceX’s Starship team all the best as the company continues to develop the rocket.
“We will have deep respect for SpaceX as they continue to venture into uncharted territory while we ourselves move on to the next challenge,” his dearMoon team said in a statement.
