Chun Wang, the Chinese-born Maltese entrepreneur who founded the Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool, has joined SpaceX’s first planned interplanetary mission to Mars after “purchasing” the mission.
SpaceX announced Thursday that the two-year-long mission will explore beyond the moon, fly by Mars, and return to Earth. Wang has also bought a ticket for a planned weeklong commercial spaceflight around the moon that will launch before the Mars mission.
“I believe that even without private investment in lunar flights, we will still reach the Moon, and likely very soon. As competition between the United States and China intensifies, governments will turn lunar bases into reality,” Wang said in a post on X on Friday.
“And I am happy to sit back and watch that happen. On the other hand, I have no confidence that Mars will still happen within our lifetime. And I think I should do something about that. I hope that by purchasing a flyby mission to Mars, SpaceX will have another reason not to forget about Mars. Because we seriously shouldn’t defer Mars to our next generation,” he added.
Source: Chun Wang
A growing number of tech entrepreneurs have started funding and taking part in trips to space, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Virgin Group co-founder Richard Branson and Jared Isaacman, founder of the American payment processing company Shift4 Payments.
Starship cargo flights to Mars for research, development and exploratory missions are expected to start no earlier than 2028, according to SpaceX.
The ultimate goal is to establish a self-sufficient city on Mars, which SpaceX estimates will require more than 1 million people and millions of tons of cargo.
“I hope this mission can show the public that Mars is not just a point of light in a telescope. It is a real place, and humans can fly there and come back alive and come back healthy,” Wang said.
Wang, a Chinese-born citizen of Malta, founded F2Pool in 2013, one of China’s first Bitcoin mining pools. It is currently the third largest pool, with a market share of over 11.85%, according to mempool.space.
Related: F2Pool co-founder says Thailand condo bought for 2,900 Bitcoin sold for 7
Last April, Wang also bankrolled and commanded the “Fram2” mission, another SpaceX venture that flew over the Earth’s poles and carried out experiments such as taking an X-ray in space and growing mushrooms.
German polar scientist Rabea Rogge, Norwegian cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen and Australian Arctic adventurer Eric Philips made up the rest of the four-person crew.
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