Status: December 8th, 2021 3:56 p.m.
Many dream of a flight into space. The Japanese billionaire Maezawa has now fulfilled this dream. He dropped off a Soyuz capsule on the International Space Station.
It is the first time in twelve years that Russia has brought a space tourist into space to the ISS: The Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa reached the International Space Station on board a spaceship. The Soyuz capsule docked at 2:40 p.m. (CET) after a six-hour flight, as was shown in a live broadcast by the Russian space agency Roskosmos.
“Dreams come true”
Maezawa started the trip together with his assistant Yozo Hirano and the Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin. With Hirano’s help, he wants to document his twelve days of everyday life on the ISS and thus entertain the more than 750,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.
For the time on the space station, the Japanese has put together a to-do list with 100 tasks. This includes a badminton friendly game. “Dreams come true,” said the billionaire on Twitter before starting his trip. “The International Space Station will be my home for two weeks.” Maezawa had spent three months preparing for the time in weightlessness.
Japanese billionaire Maezawa will spend twelve days on the ISS.
Image: REUTERS
The cosmonauts of the ISS are likely to have expected the spaceship for another reason: According to the Russian space agency Roskosmos, there were gifts for the New Year on board. Among them are letters from families and friends and “homemade delicacies”. The 162 kilogram luggage also contained materials for research and experiments, hygiene articles, food and 13 kilograms of fresh fruit.
Flight to the ISS costs up to 53 million euros
Private individuals on board the station around 400 kilometers above the ground have been rare in recent years. With the two Japanese, the number of tourists transported by Roskosmos rises to nine. One reason for the low number is that the Russian missiles took US astronauts to the ISS for many years. In addition, the costs of such trips are still immense. “We are talking about tens of millions of US dollars,” said the head of the US company Space Adventures, which specializes in space tourism, Tom Shelley, of the dpa news agency. According to him, between 44 million and 53 million euros are due per person and flight. Space tourism will therefore remain something for the very rich for the foreseeable future. It is not known exactly how expensive the flight of the two Japanese to the ISS was.
Maezawa plans to circumnavigate the moon
According to the business magazine “Forbes”, the 46-year-old Maezawa is one of the 30 richest people in Japan with private assets of around 1.7 billion euros. He started shipping CDs in 1998. The entrepreneur is now making his fortune with the largest online clothing store in Japan. For the fashion entrepreneur and art collector, staying in the space station is only the first step towards much more ambitious plans. He is apparently planning to fly around the moon with a private SpaceX flight in 2023 and had sought companions for it in a worldwide appeal.
The hustle and bustle of space tourism should come in handy for Russia. According to its own information, Roskosmos wants to further expand the space tourism business. Since the US space agency NASA has been flying its astronauts to the ISS in private spaceships, there have been vacancies in the Russian Soyuz capsules.
A Russian film team attracted attention in the fall, having flown to the ISS for a short shoot after just a few weeks of training. The USA also made for spectacular flights: Almost two months ago, “Star Trek” icon William Shatner – the former “Captain Kirk” actor flew into space. The 90-year-old Canadian actor went on a 10-minute excursion on board a “New Shepard” space capsule from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company.