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This will be the first time in 60 years of manned flight that no professional astronaut has been aboard a rocket in orbit.
SpaceX aimed to send a billionaire into orbit on Wednesday night with its two competition winners and a healthcare worker who survived childhood cancer.
This is Elon Musk’s first SpaceX-chartered passenger flight and a big step in space tourism by a private company.
“It blows my mind, honestly,” SpaceX director Benji Reed said on the eve of the launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States. “It gives me goosebumps even right now to talk about it.”
The Pennsylvania entrepreneur who foots the bill – Jared Isaacman – won’t say how much he paid.
After taking off shortly after 8:02 p.m. local time on Wednesday (12:02 a.m. GMT), Isaacman and his fellow travelers will spend three days orbiting Earth at an unusually high altitude of 575 km (357 miles) – 160 km (100 miles) above as the International Space Station – before landing off the coast of Florida this weekend.
From left to right, Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux sit in the SpaceX Dragon capsule in Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA, during a dress rehearsal for the launch on Wednesday [File: SpaceX via AP]In July, Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos launched their own rockets to boost ticket sales.
Their flights barely traveled through space and lasted only a few minutes.
Isaacman and the others – St Jude Children’s Research Hospital medical assistant Hayley Arceneaux and competition winners Chris Sembroski, a data engineer, and Sian Proctor, a community college educator – said on the eve of the launch that they had little or no last minute nervousness.
This will be the first time in 60 years of manned flight that no professional astronaut has been aboard a rocket in orbit.
The fully automated passenger capsule is already in orbit: it was used for SpaceX’s second astronaut flight for NASA to the space station.
Photographers set up remote cameras near a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sitting on Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39A September 15 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA [AP Photo/Chris O’Meara]The only significant change to the capsule, according to Reed, is the large domed window at the top in place of the usual space station docking mechanisms.
Isaacman – founder of a payment processing company and accomplished pilot – said SpaceX CEO Musk assured him that “the entire management team is focused only on this mission and is very confident.”
He added: “Obviously that also gives us a lot of confidence.”
Musk flew for the launch, as did hundreds of SpaceX employees and representatives from St Jude’s Hospital.
Isaacman uses the theft to try to raise $ 200 million for St Jude, half of which came from his own pockets.
While NASA has no role in the journey, its managers and astronauts are rooting for the flight, dubbed Inspiration4.
“For me, the more people involved, whether private or government, the better,” said NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, who is nearing the end of his six-month stay in the space station.
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