Billionaire's Mars Journey
Crypto Billionaire Avengeant, Veteran of 2025 SpaceX Flight, Tapped for Mars Mission
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SpaceX has chosen cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang to lead the first private crewed flyby of Mars, the company revealed during a Starship test broadcast on May 21, 2026. Wang, who commanded the Fram2 polar orbit mission in March 2025, will head a small crew on a round-trip journey expected to last roughly two years. Futurism and BGR first reported the announcement.
The mission has no confirmed launch date. It relies on SpaceX's Starship V3 rocket — a vehicle that has yet to complete a full orbital flight without incident. The latest test flight, on May 23, 2026, ended when Starship exploded shortly after a splashdown in the Indian Ocean, according to BGR.
Who Is Chun Wang and Why Was He Chosen
Wang is a Chinese-born, Malta-based billionaire who co-founded F2Pool, one of the world's first Bitcoin mining pools. He started with a $40,000 loan from his father in 2011 and turned it into a crypto fortune, according to BGR. He is also known online by the handle "Avengeant."
In March 2025, Wang funded and commanded the Fram2 mission — the first human spaceflight to orbit Earth's poles. He described himself as a "full-time traveler" before that flight. Now he says a Mars flyby is the right next step. "Before talking about building cities on Mars, we need to start with something," Wang said, according to JFeed. "A flyby of the planet will ignite the imagination and create momentum."
What a Mars Flyby Actually Means for SpaceX
A Mars flyby is not a landing. The crew would travel to Mars, swing around the planet using gravity, and return to Earth — a "free-return trajectory" similar to what Apollo 8 did around the Moon. The average distance to Mars is 140 million miles. The trip would take about two years round-trip, according to tallahassee.com.
The mission is a pivot for SpaceX. The company once focused on landing directly on Mars. Now it is using a flyby as a midpoint milestone. Elon Musk has said SpaceX will attempt uncrewed Mars landings first. "If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years," Musk said, according to Space.com.
Starship Still Unproven as the Key Hardware
The Mars mission depends entirely on Starship V3, which SpaceX introduced on May 12, 2026. It features Raptor 3 engines and a redesigned three-fin booster. SpaceX has flown 78 crewmembers across 20 missions — but all of them were in low-Earth orbit, not deep space, according to heraldtribune.com.
The May 23 Starship test flight marked a first — a controlled splashdown. But the vehicle exploded shortly after hitting the water. SpaceX must also master on-orbit refueling, a process where one Starship fuels another in space. That technology is still in the experimental phase. A failed Japanese billionaire moon mission — canceled in 2024 due to Starship delays — serves as a warning about optimistic timelines, according to JFeed.
Critics Question the Science and the Symbolism
Not everyone is impressed. Christopher Combs, an associate dean at UT Austin, called Wang's earlier polar mission a "notch above a gimmick," expressing doubt that private missions carry the scientific value of government-led ones, according to Futurism. The mission has no published price tag and no formal scientific payload announced.
The broader picture raises eyebrows too. A private billionaire will lead a Mars mission. Another billionaire — former SpaceX customer Jared Isaacman — now runs NASA, confirmed in a 67-to-30 Senate vote in December 2025, according to CBS News. Critics call it the "privatization of the heavens." Supporters say commercial partnerships are the fastest path to Mars. The debate is unlikely to end before a rocket leaves the ground.
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