Can tourism propel space exploration to new heights?

Yusaku Maezawa wasn’t selected by any agencies for space travel. He made the choice to go himself.

“I choose to go to the moon,” the Japanese billionaire entrepreneur proclaimed from a stage at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., Monday night. If all goes well, Mr. Maezawa will be SpaceX’s first paying customer to travel into space on a trip around the moon, perhaps as soon as 2023, and he wants to bring half a dozen artists with him.

Space tourists like Maezawa may become a regular fixture in the skies in the near future, as companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic all have stated ambitions to bring paying customers