Moscow:
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa mentioned Thursday he had no worry ahead of his “dream-come-true” launch to the International Space Station (ISS), a Russian project aimed at boosting its space tourism credentials.
The mission is one of a number of this year by non-skilled astronauts, which includes 90-year-old “Star Trek” actor William Shatner who on Wednesday completed a space flight on board a Blue Origin rocket.
Maezawa, 45, is the founder of Japan’s biggest on-line style mall and the country’s 30th richest man, according to Forbes.
“I’ve got a list of one hundred things I want to do on the station like play badminton,” Maezawa mentioned at a news conference on Thursday.
“The closer it gets the more excited I get. I’m not afraid or worried,” he mentioned.
Maezawa and his assistant are set to blast off from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in December, accompanied by Russia cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin.
They are scheduled to commit 12 days on board the ISS and Maezawa has mentioned he plans to document his journey for his YouTube channel with more than 700,000 subscribers.
“I want to tell you that dreams do come true,” he mentioned in Moscow on Thursday. “Go for goal. Everything depends on you.”
He will be the initially space tourist to travel to the ISS with Russia’s space agency Roscosmos given that 2009 when Canadian Guy Laliberte, co-founder of Cirque du Soleil, travelled to the station.
Earlier this month, Roscosmos sent an actress and a director to the ISS exactly where they are filming scenes for the initially film in orbit. They will return to Earth on Sunday.
Maezawa’s 3-particular person crew will travel aboard the Soviet-created Soyuz rocket that for decades has ferried astronauts from about the world to the ISS.
Last year, even so, Russia lost its monopoly for ISS flights to Elon Musks’s SpaceX that effectively delivered NASA astronauts to the station in a Crew Dragon capsule.
SpaceX made history this year by sending the initially all-civilian crew about the Earth’s orbit in a mission named Inspiration4.
The US corporation also plans in 2023 to take an all-civilian mission on a flight about the moon, funded by Maezawa who plans to be amongst the eight persons on board.
Competition in the space tourism sector is heating up as more players emerge.
Blue Origin, the corporation of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, completed two missions beyond the Earth’s atmosphere this year.
Virgin Galatic of billionaire Richards Branson presents a equivalent encounter of a couple of minutes in weightlessness just before coming back to Earth.
Both Bezos and Branson have been aboard for their company’s respective maiden voyage.
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