Japanese billionaire cancels private flight around the moon on SpaceX's giant Starship

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa won't shoot for the moon on SpaceX's Starship after all. 

Maezawa, who booked a private trip around the moon on SpaceX's Starship megarocket in 2018, has now scrapped the project — which he called dearMoon — after the rocket wasn't ready to fly him and eight hand-picked artists in 2023. 

"I signed the contract in 2018 based on the assumption that dearMoon would launch by the end of 2023," Maezawa said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter). "It's a developmental project so it is what it is, but it is still uncertain as to when Starship can launch."

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SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy booster make up the world's tallest and most powerful rocket ever to fly. The company launched its first uncrewed Starship test flight in April 2023, but failed to reach space. A second test in November 2023 flew higher but also failed. Starship reached space for the first time on March 14 of this year in a test that reached orbital velocity, but its Starship and Super Heavy booster did not survive to their intended splashdown 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 Artemis astronauts on the moon by 2026. 

Maezawa said the uncertainty over when Starship would be ready to fly his dearMoon mission led him to cancel the flight. 

"I can't plan my future in this situation, and I feel terrible making the crew members wait longer, hence the difficult decision to cancel at this point in time," Maezawa wrote on X. "I apologize to those who were excited for this project to happen."

In December 2022, Maezawa selected a crew of eight artists and creators to join him on his dearMoon flight, but those astronaut hopefuls have had their lunar dreams dashed. The crew included: Tim Dodd, creator of the YouTube channel Everyday Astronaut; D.J. and electronic music producer Steve Aoki; artist and choreographer Yemi A.D.; photographer Karim Iliya; filmmaker Brendan Hall; Indian TV actor Dev Joshi; and South Korean rapper T.O.P. Two backup crewmembers, dancer Miyu and snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington, were also selected. 

Maezawa also held a short-lived girlfriend contest 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, the dreams of my crew are over," Dodd wrote on X after Maezawa announced the dearMoon cancellation.

"I'm extremely disappointed, having dreamt about this mission since I first heard about it in 2018 and even more for the last 3 years since the selection process started. I slowly allowed myself to envision a trip to the Moon one little bit by little bit," Dodd added. "On the other hand, I have guilt about being upset about a gift that was retracted. A part of me doesn't feel I'm entitled to grieve since I wasn't entitled to this mission in the first place."

Dodd said he would likely have had second thoughts on joining the project if he'd known it could be canceled so soon after its announcement. 

"Had I known this could have ended within a year and a half of it being publicly announced, I would've never agreed to it," Dodd said. "We had no prior knowledge of this possibility."

When Maezawa announced the dearMoon mission in 2018, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company's Starship program (which had only been announced two years earlier) would need about $5 billion to get up and running, with Maezawa contributing a key chunk of that funding. Since then, SpaceX has secured a NASA contract to fly land the agency's Artemis 3 astronauts on the moon by 2026, as well as an uncrewed landing test. 

American billionaire Jared Isaacman, meanwhile, has booked the first crewed orbital flight of Starship as part of his three-mission Polaris Program, which also aims to fly the first private spacewalk on a SpaceX 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 brokered by Space Adventures in 2001.

To reach the moon, SpaceX has said it would take at least "ten-ish" refueling missions alone to fuel Starship for a trip to the moon (the company has not yet reached a full orbit with Starship or demonstrated a full refueling flight, though did test refueling technology on its third Starship test flight in March. 

Maezawa did not wait for Starship to be ready in his goal to reach space. In December 2021, he flew himself and a videographer to the International Space Station for a 12-day trip. He said he does wish SpaceX's Starship team the best as the company continues to develop the rocket. 

"We will hold deep respect for SpaceX as they continue to venture into uncharted territories, while we ourselves will move on to the next challenge," his dearMoon team said in a statement.