Starship - Dear Moon (Yusaku Maezawa) - Discussion

[Cosmacelf]

Tim Dodd the 'Everyday Astronaut" is going around the moon. Not figuratively or poetically, but literally. He has been chosen as one of the 4 (or 8?) crew members of 'Dear Moon' expedition.

Oh Wow! Talk about having your dream fulfilled! Remember Tim's early schtick of wearing a spacesuit? This is like a pulp fiction novel come to life.

In fact, it is exactly like that: Robert Heinlein's Have Spacesuit Will Travel opens with the protagonist being a younger version of Tim, doing all sorts of enthusiastic crazy things to win a trip to space. He ends up with a consolation price of winning a used spacesuit. Later on, out of the blue, he ends up going to space for real.

Congrats to Tim, and this is quite the motivational story about following your dreams and see where they'll take you!

 

[Electroman]

Full crew for SpaceX's privately funded moon mission announced | CNN

Japanese fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa has picked eight passengers that he said will join him on a trip around the moon, powered by SpaceX's yet-to-be-flown Starship spacecraft. The group includes American DJ Steve Aoki and space YouTuber Tim Dodd, aka the Everyday Astronaut.

www.cnn.com

More details about the crew mission. SpaceX claim for 2023 launch is ludicrous. 2026 maybe.

 

[ecarfan]

Tim Dodd is going! Wow he must be stoked. And yes, this mission is certainly not happening in 2023.

Joining Maezawa, Aoki and Dodd will be Czech multidisciplinary artist Yemi A.D., Irish photographer Rhiannon Adam, photographer Karim Iliya, Indian actor Dev Joshi, documentary filmmaker Brendan Hall and South Korean rapper Choi Seung Hyun, who goes by the stage name T.O.P.

 

[Grendal]

I think I came across The Everyday Astronaut when he had a couple thousand subscribers. I watched his transition to doing the play by plays on launches. Then he started doing the deep dive pieces into rocketry. He went ballistic after his first Elon interview. I really enjoyed his hanging out Our Ludicrous Future stream with Teslanomics Ben Sullins and Joe Scott. Now he has hit the very big time and gets a trip around the Moon. How cool is that?

 

[ecarfan]

Info about the crew https://dearmoon.earth/

 

[scaesare]

Full crew for SpaceX's privately funded moon mission announced | CNN

Japanese fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa has picked eight passengers that he said will join him on a trip around the moon, powered by SpaceX's yet-to-be-flown Starship spacecraft. The group includes American DJ Steve Aoki and space YouTuber Tim Dodd, aka the Everyday Astronaut.

www.cnn.com

More details about the crew mission. SpaceX claim for 2023 launch is ludicrous. 2026 maybe.

It's definitely aggressive.

Not sure that 2026 isn't a bit pessimistic, however...

 

[SwTslaGrl]

Cancellation

Japanese billionaire cancels moon mission

TOKYO - Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has decided to cancel his planned private space trip to orbit the Moon, as the mission’s feasibility became unclear, according to the project’s website.

www.bangkokpost.com

Meet the dearMoon Crew!

Meet the crew joining Yusaku Maezawa on this lunar mission aboard SpaceX's Starship

dearmoon.earth

 

[Grendal]

Too many delays. Understandable.

 

[ecarfan]

Sad for Tim Dodd and all the others selected. I guess Maezawa got tired of waiting. Realistically that mission is still several years away.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Sad for Tim Dodd and all the others selected. I guess Maezawa got tired of waiting. Realistically that mission is still several years away.

We don't know the reason, it could be he needs his money back, or he got his itch scratched when he went to the ISS, or indeed, life changed and he's onto other pursuits now.

 

[ecarfan]

I recall that at the Dear Moon mission announcement event, years ago now, Elon seemed to say that Maezawa had made a large financial investment in Starship development. I wonder if he now wants his money back.

 

[ecarfan]

Just read this by Eric Berger: Here’s why a Japanese billionaire just canceled his lunar flight on Starship

When Maezawa agreed to the mission in 2018, he said, the assumption was that the dearMoon mission would launch by the end of 2023. "It’s a developmental project so it is what it is, but it is still uncertain as to when Starship can launch," he wrote. "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. I apologize to those who were excited for this project to happen."

Elon and his wildly unrealistic timelines; but Berger explains that since the 2018 announcement, with Starship selected for Artemis that deprioritized dearMoon and created new priorities such as on-orbit refueling and in-space propellant depots (and I would add HLS capabilities that differ somewhat from what dearMoon would have required). Also…

In the meantime, Maezawa's priorities also likely changed. According to Forbes, when the plan was announced in 2018, the entrepreneur had a net worth of about $3 billion. Today he is estimated to be worth only half of that. Additionally, he scratched his itch to go to space in 2021, flying aboard a Russian Soyuz vehicle for a 12-day trip to the International Space Station.

And as we all know, there is another billionaire who has committed to the first private crewed Starship mission, though it too is behind schedule. At the moment I can’t even access the website that was created for it but that appears to be a connection security issue.

 

[Cosmacelf]

I recall that at the Dear Moon mission announcement event, years ago now, Elon seemed to say that Maezawa had made a large financial investment in Starship development. I wonder if he now wants his money back.

If it was an equity investment, then he has made a lot of money. Indeed, SpaceX is doing a liquidity event right now, the two events might be connected.