Money can buy you a trip to the moon aboard one of Elon Musk‘s rockets. But can it buy you true love?
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa hopes the answer will be “yes,” especially since his version of true love sounds a bit like the reality TV show The Bachelor.
The 44-year-old fashion tycoon says he’s launching a public search for a “life partner” to join him for a trip to the moon in 2023 when he’s slated to blast off aboard Musk’s SpaceX BFR rocket.
Applicants must be single, female, over the age of 20 and down to fly into space.
They also must be prepared to compete for Maezawa’s affections in a televised documentary called Full Moon Lovers, which is slated to stream through AbemaTV. The self-described “serious matchmaking documentary” is accepting applicants until Friday.
Maezawa has had his seat reserved aboard the moon rocket since September 2018, when Musk introduced him as SpaceX’s first-ever private space tourist. Maezawa said at the time that he would bring six to eight artists, architects and engineers with him on the trip as part of a project he’s dubbed Dear Moon.
Now, Maezawa says he needs a plus-one after breaking up with his actor girlfriend, 27-year-old Ayame Goriki.
“As feelings of loneliness and emptiness slowly begin to surge upon me, there’s one thing that I think about: continuing to love one woman,” Maezawa wrote on the AbemaTV website.
“I want to find a ‘life partner,'” Maezawa wrote. “With that future partner of mine, I want to shout our love and world peace from outer space.”
Maezawa is looking for someone with a “bright personality” who is “always positive,” according to the site. He also wants someone who is interested in space and physically capable of the journey. His ideal woman will also be someone who wants world peace and is looking to enjoy life to the fullest, the site says.
The website is presented in English and Japanese, but there do not appear to be any stated language requirements for applicants.
The recruitment questionnaire asks for each woman’s age, height, birthplace and occupation. It also wants to know applicants’ hobbies, “special skills,” selling points and opinions of Maezawa.
Maezawa’s Bachelor-style show is the second stunt he’s pulled within the first two weeks of the year. He announced on Jan. 1 that he would disperse US$9 million among 1,000 of his Twitter followers as part of a “social experiment” to see if it improved their lives.
Maezawa built his fortune by selling CDs and launching Zozotown, Japan’s largest online fashion retailer.
He captured headlines in 2017 for splashing out $110.5 million for a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat. It’s unclear how much he is paying Musk to be his first moon passenger, but his net worth has dipped from $2.9 billion in 2018 to $2 billion today, according to Forbes.
The deadline to apply for Maezawa’s show is Jan. 17, and finalists will get to go on a date with Maezawa in mid-March.
It’s unclear if Maezawa will use Bachelor-style roses to determine the winner, but he is expected to pop a very specific question at the end of the process.
He won’t be asking the winning woman to marry him. Instead, he’ll ask: “Come to the moon with me?”
— With files from Reuters