dearMoon benefactor cancels Starship mission around the Moon

Announced late Friday evening here in the US, the dearMoon mission to launch a team of artists and athletes around the Moon is no more. Its creator canceled the mission due to no near-term schedule certainty.

dearMoon mission canceled

A short post on social media by the mission’s account stated that the mission “will be canceled,” and thanked everyone who gave them support.

A longer statement posted to the mission’s website gave more insight into why Yusaku Maezawa (MZ) canned the mission. The statement explained, “without clear schedule certainty in the near-term, it is with a heavy heart that Maezawa made the unavoidable decision to cancel the project.”

The mission was announced in 2018, back when SpaceX was planning to make Starship out of composite material and was designed to look like the classic Tintin rockets of Elon Musk’s childhood. Also, the launch date for dearMoon was shared to be 2023, a classic over-optimistic Musk timeline.

However, as dearMoon continued to believe the crazy truth that it would not fly in 2023 or 2024, it picked a crew and hyped up the mission. Meanwhile, SpaceX made much slower progress on Starship development than originally dreamed up by Musk.

In November 2023, MZ delayed the dearMoon mission indefinitely due to Starship not being capable of launching the mission until it finished its development.

dearMoon would have been the first private mission to fly around the Moon, and instead of carrying scientist or researchers, its crew would have been full of artists and athletes. Its goal was to further inspire future generations in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math).

A good-hearted mission that didn’t need to end this way

Sadly the mission, a mission that truly would have been wonderful and from a technical standpoint could have been done, will not materialize.

Truly no one is really shocked by this development. dearMoon seemed to have just stuck to Musk’s unrealistic timeline and did not take into account the years of delays it was going to face. It did not need to end this way, but the full statement makes it sound that MZ is done with his space endeavors for now.

Let’s look at the Polaris Program as a good example. They too plan to fly a crewed mission on Starship, SpaceX even granted them the honor of being Starship’s first crewed mission, and there has yet to there even being a hint of a mission timeline yet. Polaris understands that there are still many years until Starship is capable of even a simple crewed mission, dearMoon seemed to believed it was always just around the corner.

As for the current state of Starship’s development, SpaceX is hoping to launch flight four next week with the goal to have both the booster and ship portion survive to the end of the mission. A ways away from being able to do a full loop around the Moon with crew.