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Japanese billionaire launches into space, plans cash giveaways and a zero-gravity haircut

Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa's spacecraft took off Dec. 8. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

Japanese retail mogul Yusaku Maezawa is headed for the International Space Station after his Soyuz spacecraft took off Wednesday from a launch center in Kazakhstan.

A space enthusiast even as a child, Maezawa will spend 12 days in orbit with his cameraman and assistant, Yozo Hirano, and Russian astronaut Alexander Misurkin. He will use part of the time to perform tasks from a list of 100 challenges he crowdsourced on the Internet. These include getting a haircut in zero-gravity conditions, playing air table tennis, searching for signs of alien life and experimenting with some bodily fluids.

Maezawa, who Bloomberg News says has a fortune of some $3.4 billion, has given away money to his many Twitter followers and says he plans to do so from space. His assistant, who produces videos for Maezawa’s YouTube channel, which has nearly 800,000 subscribers, will chronicle their time away from Earth.

“I feel like an elementary school student about to go on an outing,” Maezawa said at a news conference before the launch. “I didn’t think I would be able to go to space. I used to like the starry sky and heavenly bodies. I feel fortunate to have this opportunity and to finally fulfill my dream.”

The 46-year-old billionaire, who founded a major Japanese online retailer, joins a small group of wealthy entrepreneurs who are also private space travelers. Britain’s Richard Branson reached the edge of space in a vehicle designed by his company, Virgin Galactic, in July. Days later, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, also went on a space trip.

The Wednesday launch was operated by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. A Roscosmos subsidiary has marketed its services on social media as a way to escape from the lockdowns brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.

A billionaire is taking applications for a life partner. The winner gets to go to the moon.

To prepare for his space trip, Maezawa trained for months at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, near Moscow. He documented the journey on his YouTube channel, where videos show an excited Maezawa floating in machines simulating zero gravity and trying out his space suit.

Wednesday’s trip is a trial run of sorts for Maezawa, who bought all the seats aboard SpaceX’s moon-bound mission three years ago. Scheduled to launch in 2023, the Big Falcon Rocket will carry Maezawa and his companions on a week-long voyage to the moon.

The billionaire, who is a major art collector, will offer several Big Falcon seats to artists in an attempt to open up access to space. The “Dear Moon” project has received about 1 million entries from people planning to make space-influenced art, Maezawa said in July. Known for his past romances with several prominent Japanese women, he is also looking for a “life partner” to accompany him on his moon mission.

For now, Maezawa is flying to space with two other men. Writing on Twitter hours before his Wednesday launch, he said, “Dreams come true.”

Read more:

Billionaires’ race to space: Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson now set to beat Blue Origin’s Bezos to space

Trouble aboard the space station sent astronauts fleeing for safety for the second time this year

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