Japanese billionaire soars into space
The capsule took off from But now, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has stepped in to provide additional transportation to the space station for US astronauts, freeing up space for tourists. And the broaderIt’s not clear how much Maezawa, who made his fortune with the Japanese e-commerce site Zozotown, paid for the mission. Space Adventures, which planned Maezawa’s flight as well as the ISS tourism flights of the 2000s, declined to share a figure. Previous Space Adventures flights to the ISS have cost travelers between $20 million and $40 million, Tom Shelley, the company’s president, acknowledged in an interview with CNN Business. But he added that current market prices are more in the $50 million to $60 million range.”It’s certainly within the the high tens of millions of dollars,” Shelley said.Shelley also noted that after a prolonged hiatus, Space Adventures has noticed a drastic change in public awareness of spaceflight opportunities. “When we were doing this 10, 15 years ago … many people were just not aware that flying to space as a private citizen was possible,” he said. “But now — come 2021 — there really is a heightened awareness within the market, and so the discussion is different.”Maezawa and Hirano, both spaceflight novices, had to enter a three-month training regimen for their flight, and Maezawa shared snippets of his not-always-pleasant experiences on social media.But the training was less intense than some of the earliest missions, Shelley said. “When [millionaire] Dennis Tito flew back in 2001, his training was quite long. I think it was six months or more, because nobody had really done it before,” he said. “Over the years, we’ve been able to trim some of the fat out of the training requirements.”Maezawa, Hirano and Misurkin will return from the ISS on December 19, flying on the same Soyuz capsule as the first leg of their trip. If all goes according to plan, they’ll parachute to a landing in a remote area of Kazakhstan, as is standard procedure for a Soyuz flight.
