Yusaku Maezawa

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Yusaku Maezawa (前 澤 友 作, Maezawa Yūsaku; born November 22, 1975 in Kamagaya ) is a Japanese entrepreneur, art collector, billionaire and designated space tourist .

career

From 1998 Maezawa began distributing imported music albums and CDs on a small scale by mail. To expand this business, he founded a mail order company called Start Today in 2000 . From the same year he also sold his goods on the Internet and added fashion to his range. From 2004 he sold fashion on the website Zozotown . This company grew to become Japan's largest internet fashion retailer. In May 2017, business magazine Forbes estimated Maezawa's net worth at $ 3.6 billion, making him the 14th richest Japanese.

Moon flight

In February 2017, the US space company SpaceX announced plans for a tourist space flight to take place in the second quarter of 2018. A Dragon V2 spacecraft launched with the Falcon Heavy rocket was supposed to fly around the moon with two passengers . One of the two scheduled passengers was Yusaku Maezawa; at that time he already made a deposit. A year later, SpaceX decided to stop developing the Falcon Heavy for manned missions and instead focus on completing the fully reusable BFR rocket .

On September 17, 2018, SpaceX founder and technical director Elon Musk and Maezawa announced that the moon flight - if everything goes according to plan - should take place in 2023 with the BFR. Maezawa would like to stage the trip under the title "Dear Moon" (dear moon) as an art project: Six to eight artists to be selected will accompany him and then create works that are inspired by the space adventure. Maezawa contributed a "significant", unspecified amount of money to help cover BFR development costs.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Japanese art enthusiast Yusaku Maezawa in $ 98m art spree , BBC News Online. May 12, 2016. 
  2. ↑ Japan's 50 Richest People . Forbes.
  3. ↑ SpaceX to Send Privately Crewed Dragon Spacecraft Beyond the Moon Next Year. Spacex, February 28, 2017, accessed September 18, 2018 .
  4. ^ SpaceX makes announcement on private trip to the moon. In: youtube.com. SpaceX, September 17, 2018, accessed on September 18, 2018 (Minute 37: 45−38: 17: "Falcon Heavy and the two deposits, the two passengers ... what happenend to them?" "It's the same person." ).
  5. ^ Jeff Foust: SpaceX no longer planning crewed missions on Falcon Heavy. In: spacenews.com. February 5, 2018, accessed September 18, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Elon Musk sends billionaire Yusaku Maezawa to the moon with the BFR. September 18, 2018, accessed March 11, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Sonja Blaschke Tokyo, Sonja Blaschke Tokyo: Yusaku Maezawa wants to send artists to the moon. Retrieved March 11, 2019 .
  8. ↑ SpaceX: First Private Passenger on Lunar BFR Mission on YouTube , September 18, 2018, accessed September 18, 2018.
  9. ↑ Chris Gebhardt: SpaceX announces BFR lunar passenger, mission for Earth's artists. nasaspaceflight.com, September 17, 2018, accessed September 18, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Maezawa, Yusaku
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Today, start
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese billionaire, entrepreneur, art collector and designated space tourist
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH Kamagaya