Japanese billionaire cancels private SpaceX moon mission, crew devastated (2024)

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has cancelled his planned flight to the moon aboard SpaceX's Starship. It's an understandable decision considering that Starship has yet to have a completely successful test flight.

The dearMoon project announced the cancellation of the civilian moon mission on Friday. In a statement on their website, dearMoon cited SpaceX's failure to launch by the end of 2023 as planned, as well as uncertainty regarding the mission's future.

"[L]aunch within 2023 became unfeasible, and without clear schedule certainty in the near-term, it is with a heavy heart that Maezawa made the unavoidable decision to cancel the project," read a statement from dearMoon.

Maesawa followed this up with his own posts on X, expressing disappointment at his scuttled lunar dreams.

"I signed the contract in 2018 based on the assumption that dearMoon would launch by the end of 2023," Maezawa wrote on Friday. "It’s a developmental project so it is what it is, but it is still uncertain as to when Starship can launch."

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Maesawa initially announced his private SpaceX moon flight in 2018, intending to bring along a handful of artists to create works inspired by the trip. He did briefly expand the guest list in Jan. 2020, searching for a "life partner" willing to go on the most intense romantic getaway ever, but quickly abandoned that idea just a few weeks later.

In the end, the billionaire had settled on a crew of eight creatives, including U.S. DJ Steve Aoki, K-pop artist T.O.P aka Choi Seung-hyun, and YouTuber Tim Dodd. Now they'll all have to look for other transport if they want to get any closer to the moon. Maezawa has at least ventured to space before, taking a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station for a 12-day trip in 2021.

"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," Maezawa posted. "I apologize to those who were excited for this project to happen."

dearMoon's cancellation wasn't a completely outlandish possibility. Maezawa provided an update to the project last November, acknowledging that the mission wouldn't go ahead in 2023 and that he wasn't sure when it would happen. However, some of the crew members have publicly expressed disappointment and even criticised Maezawa for his decision to abort the mission.

"You didn’t ask us if we minded waiting or give us an option or discuss that you were thinking of cancelling until you’d already made the decision," photographer and crew member Rhiannon Adam responded to Maezawa on X. "I can only speak for myself but I’d have waited till it was ready."

"Our crew, from the many conversations we’ve had together, were ready to wait as long as it took for this flight to happen," filmmaker Brendan Hall concurred in a lengthy statement, emphasising that the cancellation was Maezawa's decision alone. "Through these years, our crew has stayed well informed of Starship's development through publicly available information and discourse, and were well aware that we would potentially be investing many years into this mission. The cancellation of this mission was sudden, brief, and unexpected."

"Had I known this could have ended within a year and a half of it being publicly announced, I would’ve never agreed to it," wrote Dodd in an X post. "We had no prior knowledge of this possibility. I voiced my opinions, even before the announcement, that it was improbable for dearMoon to happen in the next few years."

Still, Dodd noted that while he was "extremely disappointed," going to space would have just been a "cherry on top" of his career.

"I have guilt about being upset about a gift that was retracted," Dodd said. "A part of me doesn’t feel I’m entitled to grieve since I wasn’t entitled to this mission in the first place. But the reality is, I’ll need to allow myself to grieve this loss as it became a big part of my life, my dreams, and my visions."

SpaceX conducted Starship's first test flight last April, followed by a second one in November. Both ended in failure and fiery explosions. Its third flight in March was far more successful, with Starship managing to reach orbital speed for the very first time. Yet even this test ended earlier than intended, with SpaceX losing contact with Starship before they could attempt the planned landing.

Space flight is a difficult, dangerous endeavour, so it isn't shocking that Starship's first flights haven't ended well. Even so, it's clear that Starship still has a long way to go before it's ready to transport living human beings.