Japanese Billionaire Kicked Off His $88 Million Space Trip to the ISS, to Play Golf

It wasn’t enough for Maezawa to become the first private passenger on the upcoming SpaceX trip to the Moon in 2023. He decided to also be known as the first space tourist in many years to pay for his own trip to the International Space Station. A trip that reportedly cost him $88 million, but it’s worth it when you get to have your own initials, as a logo, on the rocket. “You can see the MZ logo very clearly,” wrote Maezawa on his social media platform, showing off the rocket in its last stages of preparation.

That’s a Soyuz-2.1a rocket, which was launched on December 8, 2021, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Japanese billionaire is joined by his assistant, Yozo Hirano, and the ship’s commander, Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin. They are about to spend 12 days at the ISS, where Maezawa intends to accomplish 100 tasks, including suggestions he received from the public. According to the BBC, these include playing golf, blowing bubbles, and throwing paper planes.

Besides having his initials written on the rocket, Maezawa enjoyed another premiere – for the first time ever, the crew that was headed to the launch station was accompanied by a song played in Japanese. “Grass by the Home” has been the unofficial anthem of Russian cosmonauts, which was now recorded by a Russian musician and a Japanese singer.

The quirky entrepreneur who became a billionaire in his 30s, and was famous for trying to find a girlfriend to accompany him to the Moon through a TV show, will be sharing his adventures at the ISS on his YouTube channel.

Russia’s Space Agency had suspended its private space program in 2010, the BBC reports, but the recent billionaire space race seems to have changed things. Who knows what other billionaires will follow in Maezawa’s footsteps?