In 2021, I and seven other civilians were selected from an open call to go around the Moon on a free SpaceX Starship flight funded by the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. The dearMoon Project included myself and another photographer. For me, the story also became about being plucked from obscurity and planted in this very surreal world I could never have imagined being a part of in a million years.
At the time, only 24 white American men had orbited or landed on the moon. Being selected for something like that changes your life and your perception of your worth in the world. The flight, originally scheduled for 2023, completely took over my life.
It took the air out of every room – I couldn’t talk about anything else. People stopped commissioning me because they assumed I was busy going to space; every conversation I had was about it. This was going to be the rest of my life.
That day in April was pivotal. We were there to watch SpaceX’s Integrated Flight Test 1. After four minutes, following a relatively successful liftoff, the vehicle experienced what they call in space terms an “RUD” – Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly – and broke apart in the air.
We put on a brave face but secretly I was thinking: “Wow, the risks are no longer theoretical. I could have been on that.” The dust cloud in the image emerged from the concrete launchpad and tower – obliterated by the power of the raptor engines. The debris ended up all over the local houses and SpaceX closed the launch facility for reconstruction for four months while they conducted a huge clean-up operation.
Going to space feels futuristic and grandiose but there are still the practical problems – like people wiping dust off their windows. Unbeknown to me, this photograph marked the beginning of the end of dearMoon. We didn’t know at that time there was trouble in paradise and a loss of faith in the project and its viability.
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