The Russian rocket carrying Japanese billionaire has flown to the International Space Station (ISS), indicating that the country will return to aviation space in a decade as competition intensifies from US companies.
Online fashion designer Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano exploded Wednesday from a Russian-powered Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 07:38 GMT, an AFP correspondent at the site said.
Their trip aboard a three-person Soyuz-powered ship sailed by the cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin will take more than six hours, depending on what many see as a secret switch. danga to walk.
Billions of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have all done well in tourism this year, entering a market that Russia wants to protect.
The crowd that arrived at the opening – including Maezawa’s relatives and friends – were terrified by the heat of the signs and were overjoyed when the rocket exploded in the gray sky, leaving a glowing fire before disappearing into the clouds.
“It simply came to our notice then. It’s moving very fast. I almost cried, “said Ryo Okubo, 46, a lawyer for Maezawa.
“I’m very happy but he’s my friend so I’m worried about him,” the billionaire’s former friend, Hiroyuki Sugimoto, 44, told AFP.
Among the celebrities was a family of three who won spots in the nomination from one million applicants. The brother and sister were carrying hand-painted signs with Maezawa’s face inside the sunflower and a rocket photo.
After stopping at the Poisk section of the Russian ISS territory, the trio will spend 12 days on the station. The Japanese strangers will write about their daily lives on the ISS of the popular YouTube movie Maezawa.
The 46-year-old billionaire has set 100 jobs to complete, including running a badminton race in orbit.
The ISS is made up of a global team of seven, including two Russian astronomers and a Japanese astronaut.
Maezawa, a space enthusiast, also wants to take eight people on a 2023 trip around the moon run by Musk’s SpaceX.
He and his assistant and the first Japanese secretaries to visit the site since journalist Toyohiro Akiyama visited Mir station in 1990.
Competing with SpaceX
Prior to the ban, Russia had a history of raising self-employed astronauts.
In collaboration with the US company Space Adventures, Roscosmos has previously taken seven guests to the ISS since 2001 – one of them twice.
The latter was the co-founder of Cirque du Soleil in Canada, Guy Laliberte in 2009, who became the first airman to perform.
“After 12 years, we had to be extremely patient. We had to be very productive. As a result, this is the end of a great deal of effort from different people, “Tom Shelley, President of Space Adventures, told AFP shortly after his departure.
In October, Russia launched its first untrained cosmonauts in space since the expedition, and provided the Russian actor and ISS leader where he filmed the first video on the way.
Moscow stopped sending spacecraft after NASA dropped its Space Shuttle mission in 2011, leaving Russia with the right to issue the ISS.
NASA purchased all Soyuz open-air seats at a cost of $ 90m at each location – the end of the aviation program.
This changed last year when the SpaceX spacecraft released its first weapons to the ISS.
NASA began purchasing a plane from SpaceX, seizing Russia and squandering $ 1 million on its multi-million dollar airline.
Although the cost of tickets to the tourist venue has not been disclosed, Space Adventures has proven to be between $ 50m and $ 60m.
Roscosmos says it plans to continue expanding its tourism business, already importing two Soyuz rockets for such missions.
“We are not giving this opportunity to the American people. We are ready to fight,” Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said Wednesday.
But Roscosmos is also facing competition from SpaceX in tourism.
Earlier this year, the Crew Dragon capsule took public service on a three-day tour around the world in history.
Burning on the heels of Russia are Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, who completed their first tour this year.
