日本亿万富翁前泽友作将在周三凌晨搭乘俄罗斯制造的联盟号太空舱并发射升空，开启十年来第一次自费前往国际空间站的旅游任务。
该太空舱将于美国东部时间周三凌晨 2:38 从俄罗斯位于哈萨克斯坦的航天发射场发射后，乘坐联盟号火箭进入轨道。它计划在大约六个小时后，美国东部时间上午 8 点 41 分与国际空间站对接。
与前泽友作一起踏上国际空间站 12 天旅程的将是俄罗斯资深宇航员亚历山大·米苏尔金（Alexander Misurkin）和前泽友作的制作助理、摄像师平野洋三（Yozo Hirano），他将拍摄这位时尚大亨在轨道空间站周围漂浮的镜头.
前泽友作在最近的一份声明中说：“我很好奇‘太空生活是什么样的'？所以，我计划自己去了解并在我的 YouTube 频道上与世界分享。”
这次任务体现了全球航天工业在过去十年中发生的巨大转变。此类太空旅游任务以前曾发生过——即 2000 年代向国际空间站发射的八次类似的富有刺激的寻求者任务，所有任务均由美国太空冒险公司在联盟号太空舱上组织。但在美国宇航局的航天飞机计划于 2011 年退役后，此类任务中断了，俄罗斯的联盟号飞船成为将专业宇航员运送到国际空间站的唯一选择。
但现在，埃隆·马斯克的 SpaceX 已经介入，为美国宇航员提供前往空间站的额外交通工具，为游客腾出空间。更广泛的太空旅游业正在蓬勃发展。最近为富有的冒险家进行的太空之旅包括 9 月为四名乘坐 SpaceX Dragon 太空舱的游客进行的慈善筹款之旅，以及几次太空之旅——包括亿万富翁航天公司创始人杰夫·贝佐斯和理查德·布兰森——在短暂的亚轨道火箭之旅中掠过空间的边缘。
国际空间站今年已经迎来了几位航天新手。 10 月，一位俄罗斯女演员兼导演在空间站上度过了 12 天，拍摄了历史性的第一部电影的一部分。
您可能还知道前泽友作的名字，因为他于 2018 年首次登上国际头条，宣布计划于 2023 年搭乘即将推出的名为 Starship 的 SpaceX 航天器与前泽友作选择的八位艺术家一起登上月球。这些计划仍在进行中，但他显然选择了在太空旅行环境中隐喻地湿透了他的双脚，将这次任务也预定到了国际空间站，国际空间站的轨道距离地球仅几百英里。
目前尚不清楚在日本电子商务网站 Zozotown 上发家致富的前泽友作为这次任务付出了多少。计划前泽的飞行以及 2000 年代国际空间站旅游飞行的 Space Adventures 拒绝透露具体数字。该公司总裁汤姆雪莱在接受美国有线电视新闻网商业采访时承认，以前飞往国际空间站的太空冒险飞行使旅客花费了 2000 万至 4000 万美元。
但他补充说，目前的市场价格在 5000 万至 6000 万美元之间。
“这肯定在数千万美元之内，”雪莱说。
雪莱还指出，在长期中断后，太空冒险已经注意到公众对太空飞行机会的认识发生了巨大变化。
“当我们在 10、15 年前做这件事时……很多人都没有意识到作为普通公民飞往太空是可能的，”他说。 “但是现在——到了 2021 年——市场内部的意识确实有所提高，因此讨论有所不同。”
Maezawa 和 Hirano 都是航天新手，他们必须为他们的飞行进行为期三个月的训练，而 Maezawa 在社交媒体上分享了他并不总是令人愉快的经历的片段。
但雪莱说，训练强度不如一些最早的任务。
“当 [百万富翁] 丹尼斯·蒂托 (Dennis Tito) 在 2001 年飞回时，他的训练时间相当长。我认为是六个月或更长时间，因为之前没有人真正做过这件事，”他说。 “多年来，我们已经能够从训练要求中减少一些脂肪。”
Maezawa、Hirano 和 Misurkin 将于 12 月 19 日从国际空间站返回，乘坐与他们旅行第一站相同的联盟号太空舱。如果一切按计划进行，他们将降落在哈萨克斯坦偏远地区，这是联盟号飞行的标准程序。
Yet another billionaire heads to space tonight
Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, will strap into a Russian-built Soyuz capsule and rocket into outer space early Wednesday morning, kicking off the first self-funded tourism mission to the International Space Station in a decade.
The capsule will ride into orbit atop a Soyuz rocket after launching from Russia's Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:38 am ET Wednesday. It's slated to dock with the ISS about six hours later, at 8:41 am ET.
Joining Maezawa on his 12-day journey aboard the ISS will be veteran Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, who will command the mission, and Maezawa's production assistant, videographer Yozo Hirano, who will capture footage of the fashion mogul as he floats around the orbiting space station.
"I'm so curious 'what's life like in space'? So, I am planning to find out on my own and share with the world on my YouTube channel," Maezawa said in a recent statement.
This mission exemplifies the drastic shift the global space industry has taken in the past decade. Such space tourism missions have happened before — namely eight similar missions for wealthy thrill seekers launched to the ISS in the 2000s, all organized aboard Soyuz capsules by US-based company Space Adventures. But such missions took a hiatus after NASA's Space Shuttle program retired in 2011, leaving Russia's Soyuz spacecraft as the only option for transporting even professional astronauts to the ISS.
But now, Elon Musk's SpaceX has stepped in to provide additional transportation to the space station for US astronauts, freeing up space for tourists. And the broader space tourism sector is booming. Recent trips to space for wealthy adventurers have included a charity fundraising trip for four tourists aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule in September, and several trips to space — including by billionaire space company founders Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson — on brief, suborbital rocket rides that brushed the edge of space.
The ISS has already welcomed a couple spaceflight novices this year. A Russian actress and director spent 12 days on the space station in October to film part of a movie in a historic first.
You may also recognize Maezawa's name, as he first grabbed international headlines in 2018 by announcing separate plans to hitch a ride on a forthcoming SpaceX spacecraft, called Starship, to the moon as soon as 2023, alongside eight artists of Maezawa's choosing. Those plans are still in the works, but he apparently opted to get his feet metaphorically wet in the space travel milieu by booking this mission to the ISS as well, which orbits just a couple hundred miles above Earth.
It's not clear how much Maezawa, who made his fortune with the Japanese e-commerce site Zozotown, paid for the mission. Space Adventures, which planned Maezawa's flight as well as the ISS tourism flights of the 2000s, declined to share a figure. Previous Space Adventures flights to the ISS have cost travelers between $20 million and $40 million, Tom Shelley, the company's president, acknowledged in an interview with CNN Business.
But he added that current market prices are more in the $50 million to $60 million range.
"It's certainly within the the high tens of millions of dollars," Shelley said.
Shelley also noted that after a prolonged hiatus, Space Adventures has noticed a drastic change in public awareness of spaceflight opportunities.
"When we were doing this 10, 15 years ago ... many people were just not aware that flying to space as a private citizen was possible," he said. "But now — come 2021 — there really is a heightened awareness within the market, and so the discussion is different."
Maezawa and Hirano, both spaceflight novices, had to enter a three-month training regimen for their flight, and Maezawa shared snippets of his not-always-pleasant experiences on social media.
But the training was less intense than some of the earliest missions, Shelley said.
"When [millionaire] Dennis Tito flew back in 2001, his training was quite long. I think it was six months or more, because nobody had really done it before," he said. "Over the years, we've been able to trim some of the fat out of the training requirements."
Maezawa, Hirano and Misurkin will return from the ISS on December 19, flying on the same Soyuz capsule as the first leg of their trip. If all goes according to plan, they'll parachute to a landing in a remote area of Kazakhstan, as is standard procedure for a Soyuz flight.
