Another billionaire is going to space at dawn this Wednesday (8)

Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, will strap himself to a Russian-made Soyuz capsule and launch a rocket into outer space early Wednesday, kicking off the first self-financed tourism mission to the International Space Station in a decade .

The capsule will enter orbit atop a Soyuz rocket after launching from Russia’s cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It’s scheduled to dock with the ISS about six hours later.

Joining Maezawa on his 12-day journey aboard the ISS will be veteran Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, who will lead the mission, and Maezawa’s production assistant, cameraman Yozo Hirano, who will capture footage of the fashion mogul while it floats around the orbiting space station.

“Am I so curious about ‘what is life in space like’? So I’m planning to find out on my own and share it with the world on my YouTube channel,” Maezawa said in a recent statement.

This mission exemplifies the dramatic shift that the global space industry has undergone over the past decade. These space tourism missions have come before — that is, eight similar missions for adrenaline-seeking billionaires launched on the ISS in the 2000s, all organized aboard Soyuz capsules by the American company Space Adventures.

But those missions went into hiatus after NASA’s space shuttle program was pulled out in 2011, leaving the Russian Soyuz spacecraft the only option for transporting even professional astronauts to the ISS.

But now, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has stepped in to provide additional transport to the space station for US astronauts, freeing up space for tourists. And the broader space tourism industry is booming.

Recent space trips for wealthy adventurers have included a charity fundraising trip for four tourists aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule in September, and several space trips — including billionaire space company founders Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson — coming soon suborbital rocket trips that touched the edge of space.

The ISS has already welcomed some newcomers to spaceflight this year. A Russian actress and director spent 12 days on the space station in October to film part of a movie at a historic premiere.

You might also recognize Maezawa’s name, as he first made international headlines in 2018 when he announced separate plans to hitch a ride on an upcoming SpaceX spacecraft, called the Starship, to the moon in 2023, alongside eight chosen artists by him.

Those plans are still in the works, but he apparently chose to metaphorically get his feet wet in the middle of space travel by reserving this mission for the ISS, which orbits just a few hundred kilometers above Earth.

It’s not clear how much Maezawa, who made his fortune with Japanese e-commerce site Zozotown, paid for the mission. Space Adventures, which planned the Maezawa flight, as well as the ISS tourist flights in the 2000s, did not disclose the figure.

Space Adventures’ previous flights to the ISS have cost travelers between $20 million and $40 million, acknowledged Tom Shelley, the company’s president, in an interview with CNN Business.

But he added that current market prices are in the range of $50m to $60m.

“It’s certainly in the tens of millions of dollars,” Shelley said.

Shelley also noted that, after an extended hiatus, Space Adventures has noticed a dramatic shift in public awareness of spaceflight opportunities.

“When we were doing this 10, 15 years ago … a lot of people just didn’t know that flying into space as an ordinary citizen was possible,” he said. “But now, in 2021, there really is a heightened awareness within the market and therefore the discussion is different.”

Maezawa and Hirano, both new to space flight, had to enter a three-month training regimen for their flight, and Maezawa shared snippets of their not-always-pleasant experiences on social media.

【2 days until Launch🚀】

The Soyuz rocket is all prepared.

MZ is also all prepared.

Just waiting for the time to come.#MZJourneytoSpace pic.twitter.com/Y9RcUDf0lQ

– Yusaku Maezawa (MZ) (@yousuckMZ) December 6, 2021

But the training was less intense than some of the earlier missions, Shelley said.

“When [o milionário] Dennis Tito flew in 2001, his training was quite long. I think it was six months or more because no one had really done this before,” he said. “Over the years, we’ve been able to eliminate some of the fat from training requirements.”

Maezawa, Hirano and Misurkin will return from the ISS on December 19, flying in the same Soyuz capsule from the first leg of their trip. If all goes according to plan, they will parachute into a remote area of ​​Kazakhstan, as is standard procedure for a Soyuz flight.

*(Translated text. Click here to read the original, in English)