NAVIGATING THE UNKNOWN: THE ODYSSEY OF SPACE EXPLORATION AND THE DEARMOON CANCELLATION

On a planet where stars are not simply abstract points of light in the sky but places to go, the rise and fall of the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his ambitious dearMoon project through the development orbit of a company and technological imagined future turns a mere civilian space flight into a tale of human dreams, technological promises and the fragile nature of the future. The abrupt cancellation of this circumlunar maiden voyage from the launch pad and into a new era with SpaceX’s Starship is a story of human passion and technological fiction.

THE LAUNCH OF A VISION: THE GENESIS OF DEARMOON

In 2018, alongside the founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, the space entrepreneur Maezawa revealed the dearMoon project. This would be humanity’s first mission to the moon: a truly artistic endeavour that would utilise the future SpaceX Starship to explore the cosmos. Maezawa claimed that the journey out into space was one for humanity, not himself alone, and so he wanted to take eight artists on the mission to “help them find their muse”.

ENCOUNTERING TURBULENCE: THE DEARMOON JOURNEY FACES CHALLENGES

dearMoon, like Starship development itself, wasn’t without setbacks. Technical challenges and delays are just par for the course in the aerospace industry, especially for a vehicle as innovative as Starship that, once it’s ready, will completely change how we explore space. But as SpaceX was working through growing pains, dearMoon, to be the first human flight for Starship outside of Earth orbit, was on unsure footing.

THE SHIFT IN ORBIT: CHANGING PRIORITIES AND THE PROJECT'S CANCELLATION

And as SpaceX juggled priorities, Maezawa’s fortunes and ambitions changed, too. The shifting global economy and Maezawa’s own spaceflight aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket and spacecraft in 2021 might have gradually deflated the appeal of the dearMoon mission. And a weakening personal bond between Maezawa and Musk, evident through Musk’s social media feed, suggested a broad divergence in the ambitions and possibilities of each venture.

BEYOND THE MOON: THE FUTURE JOURNEY OF STARSHIP AND SPACEX

With the dearMoon project now consigned to history, the bigger Starship story kicks in here. The end goal remains enormously transformative: to make Starship operational for a wide range of purposes, from satellite deployment to NASA’s Artemis lunar landings, and eventually to humans to Mars. All of this will be fraught with challenges but, if it works, it will be a triumph of humanity to keep breaking new ground.

THE ENDLESS HORIZON: THE EVOLUTION OF THE JOURNEY

If this tale of the sublime and the surreal is meant to demonstrate that humanity is on track to colonise the universe, then what dearMoon really shows us is the challenge of capturing the full spectrum of the sublime, the surreal, the messy and the turbulent, and the impacts these forces can have on humanity’s journey beyond our home planet.

UNDERSTANDING THE JOURNEY

At a basic level, the journey embodies that insatiable spirit of curiosity and exploration that defines humanity and compels us forward – not just dearMoon’s circumlunar ambitions, but perhaps the much larger horizons of Starship as well. The journey. As it persists, the journey, with all the peaks and valleys, successes and failures, is our voyage into the unknown, into tomorrow, and it’s one we learn to navigate together.