Japanese businessman Yusaku Maezawa has a modest proposal: He’d like to take you to the moon. Well, someone like you. Maezawa, founder of the fashion website Zozotown, calls the project dearMoon and says he has room for eight normal, regular people to join him on a 2023 trip to the moon. Anyone might be picked, you just need to register on the dearMoon website before March 14.
Right now, if you go to register on the dearMoon website, you can fill in your contact info and the site generates a certificate much like the one above...and not much else.
But should the trip actually occur, should you be one of the lucky eight that are chosen you will get an all expenses paid trip to the moon and back, which is three days each way with a loop behind the moon. Due to the flight path of Starship, the private rocket will actually carry humans farther from Earth than any human has been before, at least according to [serial fabulist] Elon Musk. The lucky private space farers will ride on a SpaceX rocket imaginatively called Starship. It is Musk’s hope that this trip showcase just what his Starship vehicle can do for mankind.
TechCrunch noted that, originally, Maezawa planned to bring eight artists with him, but he seems to have settled on eight living humans. He does say in the above Youtube video that he’s looking for two things in his travel companions:
I want someone with that kind of potential to take part. Are you satisfied with what you’re doing right now? By going to space, could you do something that’s even better, even bigger? If that sounds like you, please join me.
Secondly, you have to be willing and able to support other crew members who share similar aspirations. These two criteria will be key in selecting the eight crew members.
I have a proposal of my own for Mr. Maezawa: Bring the Jalopnik staff with you. We all share similar aspirations (to blog, snark) and aspire to bigger, better things, like lording over Road & Track that we went to space. Keep in mind, the Jalopnik Bump is still a thing and real. You definitely want a little extra luck on your side. Plus most of us are just as nuts about space as we are about cars and, at least judging by our comments and emails, you’d be doing our readers a huge favor by cutting us off from Earth for the six day trek around our celestial buddy. I know I could use the break.
Heck we might even start being “nice” to Tesla if its rocket-building cousin SpaceX gets us home safe. If we get back, we’ll write tons of blog posts about how funny you were and how you totally didn’t ruin every road trip game by yelling “I spy something...BLACK AND EMPTY” every time it was your turn.