HAWTHORNE, Calif./TOKYO (Reuters) - SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space transportation company, on Monday named its first private passenger on a voyage around the moon as Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, the founder and chief executive of online fashion retailer Zozo. 
 
 A former drummer in a punk band, Maezawa is tentatively planning to make his moon flight in 2023 aboard SpaceX’s forthcoming Big Falcon Rocket spaceship, taking the race to commercialize space travel to new heights. 
 
 Only 24 astronauts have flown beyond Earth’s protective magnetic shield, in missions spanning a four-year period from December 1968 to December 1972. Maezawa’s identity was revealed at an event on Monday evening at the company’s headquarters and rocket factory in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne. 
 
 “He’s a very brave person to do this,” Musk said of the Japanese entrepreneur. 
 
 Most famous outside Japan for his record-breaking $110 million purchase of an untitled 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, Maezawa said he would invite six to eight artists to join him on the lunar flyby. 
 
 The billionaire chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Inc, Musk said the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR, the super heavy-lift launch vehicle that he promises will shuttle passengers to the moon and eventually fly humans and cargo to Mars, could be conducting its first orbital flights in two to three years. 
 
 Musk has previously said he wants the rocket to be ready for an unpiloted trip to Mars in 2022, with a crewed flight in 2024, though his ambitious production targets have been known to slip. 
 
 “It’s not 100 percent certain we can bring this to flight,” Musk said of the lunar mission. 
 
 The amount Maezawa is paying for the trip was not disclosed, but he told Reuters the total sum was “much higher” than the cost of a Basquiat painting. 
 
 Musk said Maezawa had outlaid a significant deposit and would have a material impact on the cost of developing the BFR, which he estimated at about $5 billion. 
 
 RESTLESS BILLIONAIRE 
 
 The 42-year-old Maezawa is one of Japan’s most colorful executives and is a regular fixture in the country’s gossipy weeklies with his collection of foreign and Japanese art, fast cars and celebrity girlfriend. 
 
 Maezawa made his fortune by founding the wildly popular shopping site Zozotown. His company, Zozo, officially called Start Today Co Ltd, also offers a made-to-measure service using a polka dot bodysuit, the Zozosuit.. 
 
 FILE PHOTO: Yusaku Maezawa, the chief executive of Zozo, which operates Japan's popular fashion shopping site Zozotown and is officially called Start Today Co, speaks at an event launching the debut of its formal apparel items, in Tokyo, Japan, July 3, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo 
 
 In a country known for its staid corporate culture, the businessman is one of a small group of mould-breaking billionaires widely recognized by the general public. 
 
 With SpaceX, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and entrepreneur Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic battling it out to launch private-sector spacecraft, Maezawa will join a growing list of celebrities and the ultra-rich who have secured seats on flights offered on the under-development vessels. 
 
 Those who have signed up to fly on Virgin Galactic sub-orbital missions include actor Leonardo DiCaprio and pop star Justin Bieber. A 90-minute flight costs $250,000. 
 
 Short sightseeing trips to space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket are likely to cost around $200,000 to $300,000, at least to start, Reuters reported in July. 
 
 These trips were not attractive given the limited amount of time spent in zero-gravity, Maezawa told Reuters. 
 
 “If I’m going to go to space, I’d rather go as far as I can,” he said. 
 
 FLY ME TO THE MOON 
 
 Maezawa has already shown his penchant for fast machines, splashing out on vehicles including the Bugatti Chiron sports car and the Mercedes-Maybach G650 Landaulet SUV. And last month he tweeted that his new jet’s interior is being fashioned by luxury label Hermes. 
 
 He is also looking to acquire his own baseball team, telling Reuters an announcement could come this year - a move that would mark Zozo’s place in the corporate big leagues along with team-owning tech giants such as SoftBank and Rakuten. 
 
 While space flight is a more risky proposition - with Maezawa in his late 40s by 2023 - he said there are no training plans yet in place. 
 
 “SpaceX is going to be doing many, many test flights to ensure safety and we will wait for that to happen before we go,” Maezawa told Reuters. 
 
 Zozo shares fell as much as 4.7 percent and closed down 2.4 percent. Still, a jaunt around the moon would provide publicity for Zozo, which has ambitious overseas sales targets to be driven by its custom-made private clothing line. 
 
 The diminutive Maezawa, who as a young man struggled to find clothes that fit, hopes to revolutionize the fashion industry through his Zozosuit, which, once donned, allows users to upload their body measurements and order a growing number of made-to-measure items. 
 
 Slideshow (7 Images) 
 
 SpaceX has already upended the space industry with its relatively low-cost reusable Falcon 9 rockets. The company has completed more than 50 successful Falcon launches and snagged billions of dollars’ worth of contracts, including deals with NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense. 
 
 When asked about Boeing Co CEO Dennis Muilenburg’s prediction that the first humans will be carried to Mars on a Boeing rocket, Musk responded, “Game on,” to the sound of cheers from employees assembled at the event. ||||| Image copyright SpaceX Image caption Artwork: The BFR spaceship will be able to carry humans on a trip around the Moon 
 
 Elon Musk's company SpaceX has unveiled the first private passenger it plans to fly around the Moon. 
 
 Japanese billionaire and online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa, 42, announced: "I choose to go to the Moon." 
 
 The mission is planned for 2023, and would be the first lunar journey by humans since 1972. 
 
 But it is reliant on a rocket that has not been built yet, and Mr Musk cautioned: "It's not 100% certain we can bring this to flight." 
 
 The announcement was made at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, on Tuesday. 
 
 The company said the flight on board the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) - a launch system that was unveiled by Mr Musk in 2016 - represented "an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of travelling to space". 
 
 Earlier on Twitter, Mr Musk had already hinted that the passenger would be from Japan. 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mr Maezawa said he would invite up to eight artists to join him in space 
 
 Mr Maezawa made headlines last year after paying $110.5m (£85.4m) for a painting by the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat at an auction in New York. 
 
 The art enthusiast said on Monday he would invite six to eight artists from around the world to join him on the trip. 
 
 "They will be asked to create something after they return to Earth. These masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us," he told reporters. 
 
 New rocket for a new mission 
 
 Only 24 humans have visited the Moon - all of them Americans; 12 of them landed on the moon. Nasa's Apollo 17 in December 1972 marked the last time humans landed on the moon, or went beyond low Earth orbit. 
 
 Mr Maezawa will not land on the moon. He will travel on what is called a "free return trajectory", which will bring his BFR ship back to Earth after it has gone around the far side of the satellite. 
 
 In 2017, Mr Musk announced that he would be sending two paying passengers on a loop around the Moon - which was to have launched as early as this year. 
 
 At the time, SpaceX was to have used its heavy-lift Falcon Heavy rocket and the crewed version of the existing Dragon capsule. 
 
 But in February this year, Mr Musk said SpaceX would concentrate on the BFR for future crewed missions. 
 
 The BFR has never flown, but Mr Musk has released some technical details about it. The rocket is expected to stand 118m high and have a diameter of 9m. 
 
 By comparison, the Falcon Heavy is 70m tall and consists of a central rocket core surrounded by two boosters, each with a diameter of 3.66m. 
 
 On Monday, Mr Musk unveiled new artist impressions of the BFR and the spaceship which will carry passengers around the Moon. 
 
 It appeared to confirm some design changes to the spaceship, including three large fins near the back and a black heat-shield on the craft's underside. 
 
 Eventually, the BFR should be able to lift a whopping 150 tonnes into low-Earth orbit - that is more than the US Saturn V rockets that lofted the Apollo spacecraft. 
 
 The SpaceX founder has attracted some uncomfortable headlines of late - he recently smoked marijuana during a webcast with a US comedian. 
 
 Shares in Tesla have had a turbulent time after the entrepreneur said in a tweet last month that he wanted to take the carmaker private. He abandoned the idea about two weeks later. 
 
 Earlier on Monday it emerged Mr Musk was being sued for defamation over his repeated claims that a British cave diver was a child abuser. 
 
 The lawsuit brought by Vernon Unsworth, who helped with the rescue of 12 Thai teenagers from a flooded cave in July, seeks $75,000 (£57,000) in compensation and an injunction against Mr Musk to stop further allegations.
– "I choose to go to the moon," Japanese fashion tycoon Yusaka Maezawa declared at an event at SpaceX's California headquarters Monday night. SpaceX founder Elon Musk revealed Maezawa as the company's first paying passenger on a voyage around the moon scheduled for 2023, reports Reuters. Maezawa, who will become the first person to travel that far into space since the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, has signed up for the voyage in SpaceX's still unbuilt Big Falcon Rocket spaceship. Musk, who described the 42-year-old Mawzawa as "very brave," admitted it is not "100% certain we can bring this to flight." Musk said the BFR launch vehicle, which he envisions carrying passengers and cargo to the moon and Mars, will be ready for orbital flights in two or three years. SpaceX did not disclose how much Maezawa is paying for the out-of-this-world trip, but he tells Reuters it's more than the $110 million he famously paid for a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting. The tycoon said he would invite six to eight artists to travel with him on the spacecraft, which will loop around the moon without stopping, the BBC reports. "They will be asked to create something after they return to Earth," he said. "These masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us." (SpaceX's earlier plan to fly two people to the moon this year has been shelved.)