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A billionaire, a medical assistant, a geoscience professor and an engineer have taken to space aboard a SpaceX capsule in the latest commercial space industry milestone – the first time that an entire crew of people who are not professional astronauts has reached orbit.
The mission, known as Inspiration4, took off shortly after 5 p.m. PT on Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The capsule separated from the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket approximately 12 minutes after takeoff. The crew will orbit SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule for three days at an altitude of about 357 miles above Earth before landing off the coast of Florida.
The mission is different from previous crewed launches into orbit. On the one hand, it wasn’t the idea of a national government but of billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, 38, who founded payment processing company Shift4 Payments. Isaacman purchased an entire SpaceX capsule for himself and three more for an undisclosed price and will serve as the mission commander.
“Few have come before, and many are about to follow,” he said during a live broadcast of the launch after the capsule reached space. “The door is opening now, and it’s pretty amazing.”
With the launch, Isaacman aimed to raise $ 200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He pledged to donate $ 100 million to the hospital himself and announced a raffle in February in which those interested in going to space could donate money and participate. in a draw to win one of the three remaining seats.
This seat ended up going to Chris Sembroski, a Lockheed Martin engineer who entered the contest, didn’t win but will go into space anyway after a friend who won the seat transferred the prize to him. , according to the New York Times. Sembroski is a mission specialist on board the flight.
Another seat on the capsule went to Sian Proctor, a longtime professor of geosciences at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, a 2009 NASA Astronaut Program finalist and qualified pilot. Proctor won its seat in an online shopping competition hosted by the Shift4Shop e-commerce platform, which is owned by Isaacman’s company.
She is the pilot of the capsule and is the first black woman to pilot a spaceship. A minute before launch, she waved her thumbs at a camera inside the capsule, following it seconds later with a heart; About nine minutes after takeoff, after mission control announced that the capsule had made an insertion into “nominal” or normal orbit, it gave another boost.
The fourth seat went to Hayley Arceneaux, a medical assistant at St. Jude and a childhood cancer survivor who was treated in hospital. Arceneaux is the flight doctor. At 29, she is the youngest American to ever go to space and the first to fly with a prosthetic body part – part of her femur is made of metal.
The crew trained for months before their mission, rehearsing contingency plans for emergencies, training in a capsule simulator, and learning about human health research they plan to do. lead during their flight.
Wednesday’s launch follows a high-profile summer of billionaires entering the suborbital space.
In July, British billionaire Richard Branson and a crew of five other Virgin Galactic employees reached the edge of space in the Branson company’s spacecraft – the first time the craft had flown with a full crew on board. . Then, days later, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos flew into suborbital space with three other people aboard his space company Blue Origin’s rocket and capsule system.
The two companies plan to offer suborbital space walks to paying tourists, a business plan that each says will open up space beyond the limited cadre of professional astronauts or the few wealthy private astronauts who make their way. traveled to the space station.
Critics say the high cost of tickets – Virgin Galactic recently reopened sales with seat prices starting at $ 450,000 – will limit space travel to the wealthy, and billionaires could have used their funds to support more deserving causes. near their place.
Besides Isaacman, the crew of Wednesday’s flight were a bunch of ordinary people who aren’t extremely wealthy, which could “turn a lot of people on” who have their own dreams of spaceflight, said Alan Ladwig, author of the book ” See You in Orbit? Our Dream of Spaceflight ”and a former NASA official.
But other than contests and sweepstakes, spaceflight for the average person will still be limited by prizes, at least for now.
“There are going to be a handful of people who can leave, but as far as everyone is able to make their dream of flying come true – millions of people who have this dream – I think we’re a few years away from that. “says Ladwig.
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