BAIKONUR (Kazakhstan) – The Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa he is the first “tourist” in years to arrive at the International Space Station, the ISS, to stay for 12 days. The Russian mission from Kazakhstan started today with which Moscow re-enters space tourism after a ten-year break that has seen increased competition: the American billionaires have in fact entered the sector Elon Musk (SpaceX), Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) and the British Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic).
SpaceX space flight took off: for the first time four tourists in orbit
The eccentric online fashion mogul and his assistant, Yozo Hirano, departed from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The flight in the spacecraft will last six hours and the docking to the Russian segment of the ISS is scheduled for 14.41 Italian time. The billionaire called his venture “a dream come true”. “I’m happy as a child, like a student waiting for a school trip,” he told a press conference hours before the launch.
To accomplish the feat, he underwent a rigorous training program: getting used to sleeping on an inclined bed, sitting with a chair that turns continuously. “An activity that some consider useless, others necessary”, he himself told about Twitter, on his account @ yousuck2020 (2020 you suck), showing the spinning chair, with the warning that it only bothers watching the video. The billionaire actually has a much more ambitious project: he wants to go to the moon in 2023.
The two Japanese ‘tourists’ will spend 12 days on the station: they want to document their daily life on board to share it on YouTube and Maezawa has set himself 100 tasks to perform, chosen from those suggested by users: from the most obvious activities (such as introducing the other crew members) to the most bizarre ones like playing golf, blowing bubbles and throwing an airplane. paper.
Currently on the ISS, the special orbiting base that operates about 400 km above the Earth, there is a crew of seven people.
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