Elon Musk’s SpaceX introduced the world to the company’s first space tourist Monday night, announcing that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa is set to embark on a voyage around the moon. “Finally, I can tell you that I choose to go to the moon!” said Maezawa at a press conference at the aerospace company’s headquarters on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Maezawa’s journey will not take place until at least 2023 on a yet-to-be-built rocket. The mission could be delayed for a number of reasons, including production delays and more. Here’s what to know about Yusaku Maezawa. Who is Yusaku Maezawa? Maezawa, 42, lives in Chiba, a city 25 miles southeast of Tokyo. He was a billionaire by his mid-30s, making his fortune in online retailing. He started Japanese e-commerce giant Start Today in 1998 and popular fashion marketplace Zozotown in 2004. He is the 18th richest man in Japan, according to Forbes, with a personal wealth of $2.9 billion. An enthusiastic art collector, he is known for dramatic splurges. In 2016, he dropped almost $100 million during a spending spree at two art auctions in New York. His most expensive known purchase is a large work by Jean-Michel Basquiat valued at $110.5 million. What will Maezawa do on the trip? Maezawa isn’t going to the moon alone. He plans to invite between six and eight artists to join him on the trip as part of a project called Dear Moon, which he launched online shortly after his trip was announced. “These artists will be asked to create something after they return to Earth, and these masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us,” he said at the press conference. He said he wanted the artists “to see the moon up close, and the earth in full view, and create work to reflect their experience.” How much did Maezawa may SpaceX for the trip? We don’t know for sure. Maezawa has not revealed the price of his trip, but Musk said it was “a lot of money.” The trip will be free for the artists he invites along, Maezawa added. What does Maezawa’s booking mean for SpaceX? It’s a big boost for SpaceX and its CEO, Elon Musk. SpaceX is still working to built the 387-foot Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) it plans to use for its moon flight. Musk said Maezawa’s payment is big enough to “have a material effect on paying for cost and development of BFR,” which could cost as much as $5 billion overall. The moon hasn’t seen any human visitors since 1972 and NASA’s last Apollo mission. But Musk’s ambitions go beyond our lunar satellite — the BFR, he hopes, will eventually help get human visitors to Mars, too. Musk believes it’s important for humanity to become a multi-planetary species, and space tourism could help fund that lofty vision. The announcement is also a bit of good news for Musk, who has been criticized lately for the struggles at his other major company, electric automaker Tesla, and is being sued by a cave diver who Musk alleged without proof is a pedophile. Get our Space Newsletter. Sign up to receive the week's news in space. Please enter a valid email address. * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. Please try again later. Check the box if you do not wish to receive promotional offers via email from TIME. You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Write to Ciara Nugent at ciara.nugent@time.com.<doc-sep>A Japanese billionaire and online fashion tycoon, Yusaku Maezawa, will be the first man to fly on a monster SpaceX rocket for an approximately seven-day trip around the Moon as early as 2023, and he plans to bring six to eight artists along. Maezawa, 42, will be the first lunar traveler since the last U.S. Apollo mission in 1972. He paid an unspecified amount of money for the privilege. 'Ever since I was a kid, I have loved the Moon,' Maezawa said at SpaceX headquarters and rocket factory in Hawthorne, California, in the middle of metropolitan Los Angeles, late Monday. 'This is my lifelong dream.' Maezawa is chief executive of Japan's largest online fashion mall, and is the 18th richest person in Japan with a fortune of $3 billion, according to the business magazine Forbes. He is the founder of ZOZO, a global company based in Japan where people can buy clothing online. A Japanese billionaire and online fashion tycoon, Yusaku Maezawa, will be the first man to fly on a monster SpaceX rocket around the Moon as early as 2023, and he plans to bring six to eight artists along SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk (left) shakes hands with Maezawa (right) after announcing him as the first private passenger on a trip around the moon Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla Motors, has drawn attention in recent months over his erratic behavior Maezawa's other hobby is amassing valuable works of modern art and last year, he announced the acquisition of a Jean-Michel Basquiat masterpiece worth $110.5million. His love of art led him to decide to invite artists to come along for the trip, he said. 'I would like to invite six to eight artists from around the world to join me on this mission to the Moon,' Maezawa said. 'They will be asked to create something after they return to Earth. These masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us.' On his Instagram account, Maezawa posted a photo of himself looking at the prototype of what is likely the rocket that will be used to launch him toward the moon. He wrote on his caption: 'My mission to go around the moon, as the first private passenger, will represent the imagination and curiosity of all people. 'I will make this a meaningful journey with SpaceX on the BFR launch vehicle.' ROCK DRUMMER TO BILLIONAIRE: WHO IS YUSAKU MAEZAWA? An undated file photo shows Yusaku Maezawa, 42, the founder and CEO of Zozo, Japan's largest online fashion retailer Before he became a billionaire fashion entrepreneur, Yusaku Maezawa was an indie rock band member who decided to skip college ‘after seeing all the tired faces on my morning commutes’ in Japan. Born in 1975 in Chiba prefecture in Japan, Maezawa graduated from the prestigious Waseda Jitugyo High School in 1991. It was there that he started SWITCH STYLE, an indie rock band which eventually released an EP in 1995. After graduating, he followed his then-girlfriend to the United States, where he collected CDs and records of musicians he loved. Born in 1975 in Chiba prefecture in Japan, Maezawa (seen above playing the drums) graduated from the prestigious Waseda Jitugyo High School in 1991. It was there that he started SWITCH STYLE, an indie rock band which eventually released an EP in 1995 In 1995, he returned to Japan and started an import CD and record mail-order business. His business succeeded, and he began to branch out. In 2000, he created an online retail business. That same year, his band signed with BMG Japan and debuted an album. His company, Start Today Inc, also began to sell clothing. In 2004, Start Today began Zozotown, the site made a killing selling clothes from shops such as Japanese boutique United Arrows and minimal French label A.P.C. Zozotown’s success turned its founder, Maezawa, into one of Japan’s richest entrepreneurs, and its name adorns a baseball stadium. Maezawa made his fortune by founding ZOZO, an online clothing retailer which he started in Japan and built into a billion-dollar business The website set itself apart in its early days with a clean, uncluttered design and a slice of ‘Ura-Hara’ style - the modish fashion of the backstreets that line the trend-setting Harajuku district of Tokyo. Business took off as fashion-conscious professionals in their late twenties and early thirties started using Zozotown to buy trendy but work-appropriate threads online from labels such as United Arrows and Nano Universe. Its target is now broader, selling over 6,800 brands including clothes by Shimamura Co Ltd, one of Japan’s largest mass market chains. But industry executives say it still has an enviable cachet. It continued to grow until 2007, when it went public and was listed in Tokyo Mothers Market. In recent years, Maezawa has used his wealth to buy famous and pricey works of art. In 2016, he spent $57.2million for a piece by Jean-Michel Basquiat. A year later, he shelled out a whopping $110.5million at auction in Sotheby's for another Basquiat piece - this one titled Untitled (as seen above) In 2016, he spent $57.2million for a piece by Jean-Michel Basquiat. A year later, he shelled out a whopping $110.5million at auction in Sotheby's for another Basquiat piece - this one titled Untitled. He’s also bought works by Christopher Wool, one of which he paid $13.9million, as well as Richard Prince. In 2007, Maezawa spent $9.7million on Prince’s ‘Runaway Nurse’, which was a record. He also paid $6.9million for ‘Lobster,’ by Jeff Koons. Maezawa’s dream is to buy up works of art and display them in his own private museum in his hometown of Chiba prefecture. Sources: Reuters, The Daily Beast Advertisement Until now, Americans are the only ones who have left Earth's orbit. A total of 24 NASA astronauts - all white men - voyaged to the Moon during the Apollo era of the 1960s and '70s. Twelve walked on the lunar surface. The first space tourist was Dennis Tito, an American businessman who in 2001 paid some $20million to fly on a Russian spaceship to the International Space Station.<doc-sep>SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced plans to make Japanese billionaire Yusaka Maezawa the first private citizen to travel to the moon during a press conference in SpaceX’s corporate office in Hawthorne, California, on Monday night. Maezawa is (tentatively) scheduled to fly in 2023 on SpaceX’s yet-to-be-completed Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), which is still in development and was most recently estimated by Musk to cost around $5 billion to complete. Taking the microphone for about 15 minutes at the press conference, Maezawa explained that he wants to “travel to the moon with artists!” and will therefore be inviting a to-be-determined film director, painter, dancer, novelist, musician, fashion designer, sculptor, photographer, and architect with him on the trip, which will take about one week. The plan is for the art that his all-artist crew creates en route to the moon to be part of a massive exhibition and celebration upon their return; he’s calling the project #dearMoon. It all sounds magical, and also pretty far-fetched. Who is Yusaku Maezawa? Why is Elon Musk sending him to the moon? How will he get there? Will it actually happen? Here’s what we know and don’t know. Who is Yusaku Maezawa? Yusaku Maezawa is the 18th-richest person in Japan and the head of the e-commerce company Start Today, which is worth $12 billion. His personal net worth is estimated at $2.7 billion, according to Forbes. In his presentation at the SpaceX offices, he showed a photograph of himself skateboarding in Santa Monica on a six-month visit to the United States in 1998 and said that was the moment he fell in love with American music, art, and culture. He went back to Japan after the trip and joined a band as a drummer, then launched Start Today, a mail-order company for vinyl, CDs, and concert memorabilia. Start Today launched Zozotown, an online fashion retail subdivision of the company, in 2004, and it’s now enormous in its own right (CDs and vinyl being small potatoes today). Zozotown sells products from 6,300 companies and announced plans earlier this summer to overhaul the concept of fast fashion entirely by introducing custom-fit, cheap, made-to-order clothing by sending customers special spandex suits that help them take body measurements with their smartphone cameras. This has reportedly taken seven years and “double-digit millions” to create, but Maezawa told investors it will make his business grow 400 percent and hit a $46 billion valuation in the next 10 years. Maezawa also loves art! He spent $110.5 million on a Jean-Michel Basquiat skull painting last year, which he then lent to the Brooklyn Museum for several months. On the website for his #dearMoon project, he writes: If Pablo Picasso had been able to see the moon up-close, what kind of paintings would he have drawn? If John Lennon could have seen the curvature of the Earth, what kind of songs would he have written? If they had gone to space, how would the world have looked today? People are creative and have a great imagination. We all have the ability to dream dreams that have never been dreamt, to sing songs that have never been sung, to paint that which has never been seen before. I hope that this project will inspire the dreamer within each of us. In the press conference, he wouldn’t say which living artists he planned to invite on the trip, but he did say, “If you hear from me, please say yes and accept my invitation. Please don’t say no!” Why is Elon Musk sending him to the moon? Well, money. Musk wouldn’t say how much Maezawa offered, but it was apparently enough to cover the costs of the trip for him and all the artists he intends to bring with him. As reported by The Verge, he also indicated that it was a large enough amount of money to “have a material effect on paying for cost and development of BFR. … It makes a difference. He put his money where his mouth is. He’s legit.” Again, the estimated $5 billion rocket that will supposedly take Maezawa to the moon has not been built, and Musk just revealed updated plans and renderings of it on Monday. How will he get there? On the Big Falcon Rocket! Which, again, is still in the development and testing phase. It will be about the height of a 35-story building and have two pieces — a booster rocket and the spaceship it will push into orbit. This spaceship will supposedly have room for about 100 passengers, and the rocket will be so powerful that the spaceship can be filled with 150 tons’ worth of people and supplies. The Big Falcon Rocket will, according to Musk, go to Mars in 2022, before it takes Maezawa to the moon. Musk hopes private moon tourism will be the future of space travel, but there are plenty of open questions about how this will happen. Astronauts go through rigorous training before they go to space — mostly because the human body is quite simply not made to function in microgravity. Musk acknowledged this at the press conference, and said he and Maezawa still need to “discuss” what kind of preparations he and any other passengers would need to undergo before the big trip. Veteran NASA astronaut Scott Kelly hopped on Twitter after the announcement and volunteered to join the trip, which could be helpful since Kelly has spent a total of 520 days in space. If he did tag along, it would also be as a private citizen. He retired from NASA in the spring of 2016 after a celebrated career and plenty of radiation exposure. Musk says he might go on this trip too, but he hasn’t decided yet. Yusaku Maezawa (@yousuck2020), this will be a great adventure! Good luck on your trip and if you need someone with a little experience to go with you, my schedule is wide open in 2023. https://t.co/esOU51ojch — Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) September 18, 2018 Is any of this real?<doc-sep>September 18, 2018 3 min read While SpaceX’s ultimate goal is to get people to Mars, Elon Musk's company will start with a trip that a few men have famously gone on before: to the Moon. Musk announced Monday that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will be the company’s first space tourist, signing up for a trip that hasn’t been made since NASA’s Apollo program ended in 1972. SpaceX’s plan is to take Maezawa around the Moon in 2023. The 42-year-old Maezawa is an entrepreneur, but his first love is music. He plays guitar and drums and started his first band in 1993 when he was in high school. In lieu of going to college, he decided to visit the U.S. with his girlfriend. There, he began amassing a collection of rare CDs and records that in 1995, when he returned to Japan, was the foundation for his first business, a mail-order music venture. In 1998 when he was 22, he officially incorporated the business, which he named Start Today, after an album of one his favorite bands, Gorilla Biscuits. Two years later, the company launched online. While all this was going on, his band Switch Style got a record deal, made three albums and went on tour. After three years of doing both, at 25, he decided to run the business full time. Related: Inside SpaceX: What It's Like Working for a Company on a Mission to Mars In 2004, Start Today expanded into selling clothes, and launched Zozotown, a popular retail platform akin to Amazon that offers more than 6,800 brands and in 2017 brought in $76 billion in sales. Maezawa still collects, though he has moved beyond CDs. He’s now more focused on famous works of art, like the 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting he purchased last year for $110.5 million and promptly sent on a museum tour of the U.S. It was a record-breaking sum for Basquiat’s work, a record that had also been previously set by Maezawa when he bought another painting by the late artist for $57.3 million in 2016. The billionaire CEO is also a big fan of giving back to his hometown. Start Today is headquartered in Chiba Prefecture, and Maezawa plans to build a museum there where he can put his art collection on display. Maezawa, who is the 18th richest man in Japan with a net worth of $2.9 billion, bought out all the seats on SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket for the trip and isn’t planning on going alone. As befitting his love of art, he wants to bring a group of artists to make the week-long voyage into what he describes as an “awe-inspiring, global, universal art project” called #dearMoon. He wrote of the goal, “I hope that this project will inspire the dreamer within each of us.”<doc-sep>
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk with Japanese billionaire and online fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa. Highlights Yusaku Maezawa will fly on a monster SpaceX rocket as early as 2023 Maezawa is the 18th richest person in Japan with a fortune of $3 billion Elon Musk described Maezawa as the "bravest" and "best adventurer" A Japanese billionaire and online fashion tycoon, Yusaku Maezawa, will be the first man to fly on a monster SpaceX rocket around the Moon as early as 2023, and he plans to bring six to eight artists along. Maezawa, 42, will be the first lunar traveler since the last US Apollo mission in 1972. He paid an unspecified amount of money for the privilege. "Ever since I was a kid, I have loved the Moon," Maezawa said at SpaceX headquarters and rocket factory in Hawthorne, California, in the middle of metropolitan Los Angeles, late Monday. "This is my lifelong dream." The first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard BFR is fashion innovator and globally recognized art curator Yusaku Maezawa. — SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 18, 2018 Maezawa is chief executive of Japan's largest online fashion mall, and is the 18th richest person in Japan with a fortune of $3 billion, according to the business magazine Forbes. Maezawa's other hobby is amassing valuable works of modern art and last year, he announced the acquisition of a Jean-Michel Basquiat masterpiece worth $110.5 million. His love of art led him to decide to invite artists to come along, he said. "I would like to invite six to eight artists from around the world to join me on this mission to the Moon," Maezawa said. "They will be asked to create something after they return to Earth. These masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us." Maezawa said he planned to pick "artists I love" to go along, but gave no further specifics. Until now, Americans are the only ones who have left Earth's orbit. A total of 24 NASA astronauts -- all white men -- voyaged to the Moon during the Apollo era of the 1960s and '70s. Twelve walked on the lunar surface. The first space tourist was Dennis Tito, an American businessman who in 2001 paid some $20 million to fly on a Russian spaceship to the International Space Station. Free for artists SpaceX CEO Elon Musk described Maezawa as the "bravest" and "best adventurer." "He stepped forward," Musk added. "We are honored that he chose us." Musk said he would not reveal the price Maezawa paid for the Moon trip, but said it would be "free for the artists." "This is dangerous, to be clear. This is no walk in the park," Musk cautioned. "When you are pushing the frontier, it is not a sure thing. There is a chance something could go wrong." Still, when asked by reporters if Musk would be a passenger, he left the door open to the possibility. "As far as me going, I'm not sure. He did suggest like maybe that I would join on this trip. I don't know," Musk said. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Maezawa. "All right. Maybe we will both be on it," Musk said to cheers and applause. The ride will take place aboard a Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), which may not be ready for human flight for five years at least, Musk said. The BFR was first announced in 2016, and was touted as the most powerful rocket in history, even more potent than the Saturn V Moon rocket that launched the Apollo missions five decades ago. Last year, Musk said the BFR's admittedly "ambitious" goal was to make a test flight to Mars in 2022, followed by a crewed flight to the Red Planet in 2024. 'Multi-planetary species' This isn't the first time Musk has vowed to send tourists around the Moon. Last year, he said two paying tourists would circle the Moon in 2018, but those plans that did not materialize. Musk showed off designs for the 118-meter (129 yards) long BFR, which will consist of a first stage with engines and fuel systems, and a second stage with the spacecraft where the passengers will ride. Musk estimated it would cost $5 billion to build. The BFR spacecraft's shape is reminiscent of the space shuttle, the bus-like US spaceships that carried astronauts to space 135 times from 1981 to 2011.