I was hooked to YouTube when SpaceX went live the other day to announce the first commercial passenger in human history to book a trip around the moon.

Not long ago, the entire world was inspired by a race to reach the moon. Now, we can be inspired again! Humanity is once again reaching for the stars.

But this time, while Elon Musk intends to start with the moon, his vision is much bigger:

“The purpose for SpaceX, the reason for creating SpaceX was to accelerate the advent of humanity becoming a space fairing civilization, to help advance rocket technology to a point where we could potentially become a multi-planet species and a true space-faring civilization.

Why? The reasoning is as important as the mission:

“As we consider the fossil record, the history of civilization, it’s important to bear in mind there could be some natural event or some man-made event that ends civilization as we know it. So it’s important that we try to become a multi-planet civilization, extend life beyond Earth and to do so as quickly as we can.”

If you ask me, though, it was Yusaku Meazawa’s part of the presentation that stole the show. We’ve known Musk’s plans for a while now, but Maezawa surprised me.

Even though the Japanese art collector and billionaire disparaged his own English, I had no trouble understanding his desire to contribute his wealth to something as inspiring as a trip around the moon and back.

And to take artists with him to share the experience? How cool.

I also happen to agree with both Maezawa and Musk that efforts like this are what will help advance space travel and take us one step closer to becoming a “multi planetary species.” No matter who is on that first rocket, I’ll be cheering for them.

Here’s the video of the talk if you want to watch it yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu7WJD8vpAQ