Ralph Kramden, on The Honeymooners, often invited his wife Alice to go to the moon. That was back in the mid 50s, when interstellar travel was just a dream of science fiction fans.
Here in rocket-fast 2021, a Japanese billionaire is on his way to the moon, and he wants to take eight people with him!
The rich guy is Yusaku Maezawa. He was chosen to be SpaceX's first private passenger back in 2018, and now he is going public, looking for people who want to fly with him to the moon.
"I’m inviting you to join me on this mission, eight of you from all around the world," Maezawa said in a video he released last week.
If you go, set aside "2023" in your Hallmark datebook. The Starship spacecraft that will carry this bunch of literal lunatics into space is being developed by Elon Musk's "private space-faring firm" SpaceX.
"I will pay for the entire journey," Maezawa said. "Ten to 12 of us will be on board, and I hope that together we can make it a fun trip."
He says that now, and then watch. He won't want to stop at Dairy Queen or anything.
Maezawa says at first he planned to bring world-famous artists with him, but now, "the plan has evolved" which is the new way to say, "No one I asked would go."
"I began to wonder...what do I mean by artists?" he said. "The more I thought about it, the more ambiguous it became. I began to think that maybe every single person who is doing something creative could be called an artist."
Lowering his standards a bit, Maezawa now says the flight is "open to anyone who has the goal of going into space to help other people and greater society in some way."
Maezawa adds that anyone coming along for the ride must be "willing and able to support other crew members who share similar aspirations." In the real world, this comes under the heading "other duties as assigned."
But, "If that sounds like you, please join me," he said.
Don't forget, Maezawa is in league with Elon Musk.
I understand that Musk is a very wealthy man, a centibillionaire to be precise, and he made that fortune as co-founder of what became PayPal, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, and he has this SpaceX thing going on now.
And, he's into a startup company called Neuralink, looking into ways to implant chips into people's brains to create a "brain-computer" interface.
And he wants to colonize Mars, building factories and sandwich shops. He also wants to hit Mars with thermonuclear weapons. This would warm that planet, and create the equivalent of two suns over the planet's poles.
I wouldn't ride to the mall with him if he were driving, but hey, if you're up for it, enjoy your trip to the moon!
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