Japanese Billionaire’s dearMoon Mission Cancelled: Click to Know More

In December 2022, Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire booked a private trip around the moon on Elon Musk’s SpaceX's Starship megarocket, which he called dearMoon. Maezawa selected a crew of 8 artists and creators to go with him, which included Tim Dodd, creator of the YouTube channel Everyday Astronaut, D.J. and electronic music producer Steve Aoki, artist and choreographer Yemi A.D., photographer Karim Iliya; filmmaker Brendan Hall, Indian TV actor Dev Joshi, and South Korean rapper T.O.P and two backup crewmembers, dancer Miyu and snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington.

On June 1, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa cancelled his "dearMoon" mission, the project said would have been the first private flight around the moon. They released a statement on the website saying, "Without clear schedule certainty in the near-term, it is with a heavy heart that Maezawa made the unavoidable decision to cancel the project. To all who have supported this project and looked forward to this endeavor, we sincerely appreciate it and apologize for this outcome."

In a statement made by Maezawa himself on the social media platform X, he says, "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."

Tim Dodd, one of the crew members expressed his distress on X, “And just like that, the dreams of my crew are over. I'm extremely disappointed, having dreamt about this mission since I first heard about it in 2018 and even more for the last 3 years since the selection process started. I slowly allowed myself to envision a trip to the Moon one little bit by little bit," Dodd added. "On the other hand, I have guilt about being upset about a gift that was retracted. A part of me doesn't feel I'm entitled to grieve since I wasn't entitled to this mission in the first place."

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