A Japanese billionaire who hoped to find a girlfriend and take her on a trip to the Moon has cancelled his search.
Yusaku Maezawa had intended to document his search for a companion through a TV show, before whisking the winner off on a private spaceflight around the Moon.
But he said both the search and the show had been cancelled for “personal reasons”.
Nearly 28,000 women had already applied to be a part of the search, he said, and he apologised to them for having wasted their time.
Maezawa made his fortune after launching Zozotown, Japan’s largest online clothes retailer. He has since used his fortune for a variety of unusual projects, including offering a cash prize to make him the most retweeted person ever in addition to the journey to space.
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Pluto, as pictured by Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft as it flew over the dwarf planet for the first time ever in July 2015
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A coronal mass ejection as seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time that Chandra has detected this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun
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Mystic Mountain, a pillar of gas and dust standing at three-light-years tall, bursting with jets of gas flom fledgling stars buried within, was captured by Nasa’s Hubble Space Telelscope in February 2010
Nasa/ESA/STScI
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The first ever selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by Nasa’s Curiosity Rover in the early days of its mission to explore Mars in 2012
Nasa/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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Death of a star: This image from Nasa’s Chandra X-ray telescope shows the supernova of Tycho, a star in our Milky Way galaxy
Nasa
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Arrokoth, the most distant object ever explored, pictured here on 1 January 2019 by a camera on Nasa’s New Horizons spaceraft at a distance of 4.1 billion miles from Earth
Getty
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An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust
Nasa
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The first ever image of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon telescope, as part of a global collaboration involving Nasa, and released on 10 April 2019. The image reveals the black hole at the centre of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides about 54 million light-years from Earth
Getty
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Pluto, as pictured by Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft as it flew over the dwarf planet for the first time ever in July 2015
Nasa/APL/SwRI
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A coronal mass ejection as seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time that Chandra has detected this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun
Nasa
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Dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks running downhill on the surface Mars were believed to be evidence of contemporary flowing water. It has since been suggested that they may instead be formed by flowing sand
Nasa/JPL/University of Arizona
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Morning Aurora: Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station in October 2015
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He had already paid a significant deposit on the trip around the Moon, which will be SpaceX‘s first entry into space tourism and is expected to happen after 2023. Initially, he had said that he would take six to eight artists on the trip with him, with the hope that they would document the journey.
But earlier this month, the 44-year-old said he was also on the search for a “life partner” who would get a seat onboard the journey. He asked for applications from women who were over 20, single, and had an interest in heading to space.
The journey to choose one woman from those applicants would be captured in a documentary called “Full Moon Lovers” and the winner would get a chance to come on the trip, he said earlier this month.
The cancellation of that plan was announced in a series of tweets, in which Maezawa apologised to those he had “disappointed”.
“Due to personal reasons, I have informed AbemaTV yesterday with my decision to no longer participate in the matchmaking documentary, hence requested for the cancellation of the show,” he wrote in a series of tweets.
“Despite my genuine and honest determination toward the show, there was a part of me that still had mixed feelings about my participation.
“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.
“I understand that I have disappointed many people – the applicants and all the staff from AbemaTV who were involved in the production – and I apologize to everyone for my unfavorable actions. I am truly sorry from the bottom of my heart.”
