Space Tourism Just Had a Huge Leap Forward

Space Exploration
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This week was a very exciting week for humanity. SpaceX announced the first passenger who will ride the BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) on a trip around the moon and back to earth.

Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese fashion innovator and globally recognized art curator, will be the first passenger on the BFR. Yusaku Maezawa didn’t just buy a seat on the first private space flight. He bought all of the seats available for an undisclosed amount and already made a downpayment. This payment will help SpaceX to develop and build the BFR.

The BFR is a very exciting spacecraft, which is not only designed to go to the moon but also beyond. With a scheduled launch date of 2023, SpaceX has only 5 years to develop, build and test the BFR to have it ready for the lunar mission.

Don’t think Yusaku Maezawa was selfish when he bought all the seats for the BFR’s lunar mission. He is actually very generous, first in providing funds for the development of the spacecraft and second, he will give the remaining seats away to artists from all over the world and from different categories.

The week-long journey to the moon and back will be a first in our history. Not many private citizens of earth have ever been in space. Only 24 humans have been to the moon so far. No one has visited since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

Flightpath of the BFR Lunar Mission (Courtesy of SpaceX)

After returning to Earth, the artists are asked to create an artwork based on their experience on the trip to the moon. For that reason, a special website and campaign was created: #dearMoon

In the upcoming months, the artists which will join this mission will be announced on the social network channels of the #dearMoon Project. I am excited to see, which artists will be picked and if they are all brave enough to go on that journey.

The BFR Lunar Mission will bring mankind one step closer to become an interplanetary society. These are the dreams of many people like Elon Musk, Founder and CEO of SpaceX. Yusaku Maezawa believes art can inspire world-piece and I definitely hope the art produced by the participating artists help to promote world-piece.

Being an interplanetary society is something amazing and I hope technology evolves fast enough for me to be part of it or at least see it happening. Once we become interplanetary I really hope we gain interplanetary peace as well. Hopefully, we don’t end up like in the Sci-Fi TV-Show “The Expanse” where colonies of humans fight each other. We should devote our resources to solve issues of mankind and to evolve and not to destroy each other.

Does it really need an extinction-level event, like an Asteroid which is about to wipe out our planet, for humanity to become once and put our differences aside? If you watch the TV-Show “Salvation” you see that even in that case people are still greedy. I know these are two fictive examples produced by Hollywood. If you hear how we treat each other and our planet at the moment, this could be very well what would happen to us in the future or how we would behave. There are other movie examples like “Independence Day” or “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. Both of them involve an alien race to threaten our planet. Maybe unlikely, maybe not. This is just another fiction of Hollywood but it’s about an “extinction level event”. Will we come together and put our own differences aside?

Do you know how we really would behave in any of this scenario? I hope mankind wakes up and devotes its resources otherwise and not on killing each other any further.

Now, let’s focus first on the lunar mission and its outcome.

Hopefully, after a successful fly-by, we will send people back to the moon and after that to Mars.

A new kind of space race is born:

Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing, said in December of last year, that the first people on Mars will be arriving in a spacecraft Boeing is building for NASA before SpaceX makes it to the red planet.

Competition is good and Elon Musk acknowledged that yesterday as well during the live cast while introducing the first BFR passenger.

Elon Musk said during the live stream that there is no guarantee that the BFR lunar mission will be launching in 2023 but I wish everyone good luck and success to make this happen. Even if it gets delayed a little bit, as long as we can travel safely to the moon and back, it was a success.

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