#dearMoon Is An Amazing Project That I Hope To See Come To Completion. 🖤

#dearMoon is an amazing project that I hope to see come to completion. 🖤

Japanese Billionaire purchases SpaceX colonial ship for circumlunar art project. (September 16, 2018)

Two years after the company announced that a private individual bought a Crew Dragon flight to the moon, SpaceX founder and chief designer Elon Musk revealed their identity Monday night, September 16. In a press conference held at the company’s Hawthorne, California headquarters, surrounded by newly-constructed Falcon 9 rockets, Musk announced that 42-year old Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa bought an entire BFR spaceship for a circumlunar mission slated to launch no earlier than 2023.

Maezawa - a 42-year old art collector and founder of Japan’s largest online fashion retail site - booked the flight as part of his #dearMoon project, which was also revealed at Monday night’s conference. “Ever since I was a kid, I have loved the moon. Just staring at the moon filled my imagination. It’s always there and has continued to inspire humanity. That is why I could not pass up this opportunity to see the moon up-close.”

#dearMoon

However, Maezawa does not plan on travelling to cislunar space alone - he intends on taking up to eight artists on a trip that aims to “inspire the dreamers in all of us.”

“What if Picasso had gone to the moon, or Andy Warhol, or Michael Jackson, or John Lennon, or Coco Chanel. There are so many artists with us today that I wish would create amazing works of art for humankind, for children of the next generation. And I wish very much that such artists could go to space, and see the moon up close and the Earth in full view and create works that reflect their experience.

#dearMoon aims to send up to eight artists as Maezawa’s guests on a six-day voyage around the moon. “These artists will be asked to create something after their return to Earth and these masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us” Maezawa stated.

The billionaire entrepreneur had not decided on the specific amount of artists or the fields they will represent, but an accompanying promotional video for the project stated that they will “represent Earth” from various fields. These could include “painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians, film directors, fashion designers, architects, etc.”

Maezawa’s inspiration for the project stemmed from imagining his favourite painter - Jean-Michel Basquait, and the works he could have created had he seen the Moon up close. Referencing pop culture and music references ranging from Beethoven to Van Gogh and the Beetles, Maezawa stated that the moon has inspired countless works throughout the ages. “And with utmost love and respect for the moon, our planet’s constant partner, I named this project #dearMoon.” This will not be the first time that prominent Earth artists have come together to create lunar-inspired artwork. Although the artists themselves never left the planet, miniature facsimile copies of works created by Andy Warhol, Forrest Myers, Robert Rauschenberg and others were secretly installed by a Grumman employee on the Apollo 12 lunar module in 1969. The ‘Moon Museum’ - a ceramic wafter less than an inch in size hidden under the gold foil of the Lunar Module’s descent stage - was not disclosed publicly until the mission was already returning to the Earth following their lunar landing.

From the Earth to the Moon.

According to graphics presented at the press conference, Maezawa’s flight would last just under six days from launch to landing. The Big Falcon Spaceship would fly on a “free-return” trajectory around the moon, a flight profile which craft loop around the moon without entering orbit and return to Earth. Lunar gravity would maneuver the spacecraft in such a way that additional course corrections would not be necessary, providing the safest flight profile for a flyby. Apollo 13 flew a modified free-return trajectory following the explosion of an oxygen tank aboard the spacecraft in April, 1970. According to a SpaceX tweet late Monday evening, the company is expecting the BFS to fly as close as 125 miles to the Lunar surface.

During a question and answer session immediately following the announcement, Elon Musk stated that the projected 2023 launch date is not set in stone. “This is a ridiculously big rocket. It’s got so much advanced technology. It’s not 100% certain that we succeed in getting this to flight.” By comparison, the inaugural flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket was slated for late mid-2014 before slipping to the right nearly four years to February 2018.

Monday’s announcement also confirmed that Maezawa initially intended to perform the mission on the company’s Crew Dragon vehicle atop a Falcon Heavy rocket. SpaceX announced in February, 2017 that an unnamed individual paid a deposit for the flight, which was initially scheduled to launch in late 2018.

Immediately following Falcon Heavy’s test flight in February, 2018, SpaceX stated that the rocket was no longer being human-rated, putting the future of the mission in doubt until last week. Musk stated Monday that after modifying the capsule for deep space flight and circumlunar operations, there would only have been enough room for Maezawa and one additional person, not enough to fulfill the host’s desire for a variety of artists.

“If in doubt, go with Tintin.”

Monday’s announcement also presented the third variation of Musk’s Big Falcon Rocket since it was announced at the 2016 IAC in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The recent modifications reflect additional design work by the SpaceX teams to make the spaceship more aerodynamically stable during atmospheric landings and surface operations.

Whereas the previous versions of the Big Falcon Spaceship resembled a cylinder with two small delta wings, the new design features three equally-sized wings equidistant around the vehicles aft section. Two of the wings would be actuated control surfaces that would change orientation during various parts of planetary atmospheric entry. The third, according to Musk “is just a leg…it doesn’t serve any aerodynamic purpose.”

Two smaller fins near the nose of the ship actuate in tandem with the larger fins for further stability.

The design resembles the interplanetary ships of mid 20th-century science fiction, including the rocket from Belgian cartoonist Herge’s famous Tintin series. Musk even stated during the conference that he wanted to bias the BFR design towards the famous cartoon ship: “I love the Tintin rocket design. If in doubt, go with Tintin.”

Although Musk declined to comment on the amount of Maezawa’s deposit for the BFR circumlunar flight, he did state that “it will have a material effect on paying for the development” of the BFR system. Currently, only around 5% of SpaceX resources are spent on BFR, though Musk expects that to “change quite significantly in the years to come.”

He reiterated that the company’s top priorities are still NASA missions to the space station and commercial launches using the smaller Falcon 9 vehicle. The final major version of that rocket, the Block 5, made its first flight earlier in 2018. Once Crew Dragon flights begin on a regular basis - Musk did not state a specific time but likely to be in early 2019 - the company will shift their engineering talent more fully towards BFR. Musk also showed images of the BFR test article, including a cylindrical segment constructed at the company’s recently-purchased facility at the Port of Los Angeles. Watch the introductory video for #dearMoon below. Click here for a replay of SpaceX’s press conference introducing Maezawa and #dearMoon

P/c: SpaceX/#dearMoon