The Japanese billionaire who announced that he would be looking for a “life partner” to take to the moon has quashed his plans.
On what could be considered the most ambitious first date in history, Yusaku Maezawa was looking for a female to accompany him on SpaceX’s first tourist mission to the moon, slated to launch in 2023.
Maezawa is a fashion mogul, entrepreneur and art collector. He launched Zozotown, Japan’s largest fashion retail website and has a net worth of $2 billion.
A few weeks ago, he announced his plans to invite a single woman with him on his journey.
The criteria was simple: be a single woman over the age of 20, and have an interest in space exploration.
Only one woman would be selected, and the whole process of selection would be turned into a documentary called "Full Moon Lovers".
Maezawa received almost 28,000 applications, potentially making it the most intense season of the Bachelor in history.
However, today he announced that he had “mixed feelings” about the contest and was no longer looking for an interstellar romance.
He still intends to go to the moon, but he will do so without a partner.
In a series of tweets, he expressed his regret about his participation in the application and the documentary.
He tweeted: “To think that 27,722 women, with earnest intentions and courage, had used their precious time to apply makes me feel extremely remorseful to conclude and inform everyone with this selfish decision of mine.”
He then apologised to all the applicants as well as the production team of the documentary, who were undoubtedly disappointed at his announcement.
Maezawa hit the news a year ago when his tweet became the retweeted post in history.
In the tweet, he offered to share 100 million yen (approximately 725 million pounds then) among 100 people that retweet his post and follow him.
The post gained over 4.3 million shares, beating the record of the Carter Wilkinson, who challenged the chain restaurant Wendy’s in getting free chicken nuggets for a year if he gets 18 million shares.
While he didn’t reach his goal, he broke the record and Wendy’s offered him the chicken nuggets anyway.
