Who wants to fly to the moon with a jazz drummer?
This week, I imagine you're all filling out your application forms for a chance to fly around the moon with Yusaku Maezawa. As I don't need to tell you, the Japanese billionaire and latter-day Willy Wonka has just announced that he is widening his search for people to join him on the all-expenses-paid round trip on Elon Musk's starship in 2023. He's no longer looking for eight artists. He's looking for eight creative people. Because every person who is doing something creative, he has concluded, could be called an artist. A lot of social media content providers have already expressed an interest.
"Are you satisfied with what you're doing right now?" he asks. "By going to space, could you do something that's even better, even bigger?"
Is anyone satisfied with what they are doing right now? I mean, home schooling is over and it was very, very satisfying to usher the kids onto the school bus on Monday. Like, one of the happiest moments of my life. But satisfaction has been in PPE-last-March supply this year. It's true that by going to space I'd be doing something bigger, something better. But also, by going for a slightly different bike ride. Or adding tomato to today's cheese toastie.
Don't let me stop you, though. I'm sure, in two years' time, Musk and his SpaceX team will have ironed out all the space-is-hard kinks. Only last week they managed to land a rocket successfully … it exploded only a few minutes later. Don't think about that when you're coming in to land in 2023. People are already way too impatient to disembark after a long-haul flight.