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from the making-spacefright-safe-for-non-astronauts dept.
Japanese Billionaire Arrives at Space Station for 12-Day Tourist Trip:
Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire and fashion retail mogul, arrived at the International Space Station for a 12-day stay on Wednesday. [Dec 8] He is the latest privately funded traveler to the orbital laboratory in a year that has seen more tourists making voyages to space than ever before.
Mr. Maezawa, the founder of Zozo, a Japanese online fashion retailer, launched to space from Baikonur, Kazakhstan at 2:38 a.m. Eastern time (10:38 a.m. local time) on a Russian Soyuz rocket with Yozo Hirano, a production assistant who will document his trip. Alexander Misurkin, a Russian astronaut, was also on board. The three-man crew docked to the space station six hours later at 8:40 a.m. and boarded the outpost around 11:12 a.m.
[...] Mr. Maezawa, an animated adventure-seeker, drew international attention in 2016 when he spent $57.3 million at an auction for a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 2017, he paid $110.5 million for another painting by the same artist. In 2018, he declared his interest in spaceflight at an event at the Southern California headquarters of SpaceX, where he joined the company's founder, Elon Musk, onstage to announce that he would be the first passenger to ride SpaceX's Starship, a massive next-generation rocket that will one day ferry NASA astronauts to the lunar surface.
[...] The space station jaunt for Mr. Maezawa, 46, was announced in May, and he has been training for weeks at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center just outside Moscow.
Read more of the article for estimates of how much Yusaku may have paid for his ride to space.
Previously:
Japanese Billionaire Seeks 8 Crewmembers for Moon-Bound Mission on SpaceX's StarshipSpaceX Moon Passenger Yusaku Maezawa Has 20,000 Applicants to be Girlfriend He Takes on Journey
SpaceX Reveals Plan to Fly Yusaku Maezawa and Artists "Around the Moon" in a BFR
(Score: 2, Touché) by mhajicek on Friday December 10 2021, @06:26AM
If he seeks animated adventures, he can do that from the couch.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 10 2021, @11:35AM (4 children)
While the rest of us are wondering what carbon footprint our little rich buddy just made.
With fashion being the number 2 polluter, he really ranks up there doing wonderful things with his life.
God Bless him.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 10 2021, @11:59AM
Steel works, transportation, and household heating and appliances are the top 3. Fashion isn't even a dent.
(Score: 2) by oumuamua on Friday December 10 2021, @03:45PM (2 children)
There are only so many satellites to launch before demand evaporates. Space tourism is a good driver for the commercialization of space, so if you support mankind going out into the solar system space tourism should be cheered not jeered.
(Score: 2) by bmimatt on Friday December 10 2021, @04:44PM (1 child)
Sure. As long as it is properly taxed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 11 2021, @06:23AM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bart9h on Friday December 10 2021, @01:38PM (1 child)
12 days seems too much for me to be confined in a space station (for fun).
I imagine that the magic of gazing at the planet from up there would fade after the second or third day.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Friday December 10 2021, @02:51PM
Perhaps, but considering how much he spent to get there. He may as well get a week and a half long "vacation in space". While it would lose it's initial bright shiny wow factor after a few days. There's no other view like it. Certainly has to be better than some of my "vacations".
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"