SpaceX Inspiration 4 launches first all-civilian crew into space including Jared Isaacman in huge leap for space tourism
SPACEX launched the first ever all-civilian crew into Earth’s orbit on Wednesday – in a major leap for space tourism.
The Inspiration 4 mission, which is the first chartered passenger flight for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, took place in NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Commanding the historic flight is 38-year-old billionaire Jared Isaacman, who took control of the Falcon 9 rocket as it took off as scheduled just after 8pm — carrying the Dragon capsule toward its three-day orbit 357 miles from Earth’s surface.
Isaacman is the third billionaire to launch this summer, following Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos in July.
Also on the flight are two contest winners and a health care worker who survived childhood cancer, 29-year-old Hayley Arceneaux.
Arceneaux has become the American in space and the first person in space with a prosthesis.
The other two people aboard Inspiration4 are sweepstakes winners Chris Sembroski, a 42-year-old data engineer front Washington state, and Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old community college educator from Arizona.
The all-amateur crew — all who were seen waving to their families and employees before getting into their flight suits — is expected to return to Earth off the Florida coast in about three days.
Since neither of the four crew members are professional astronauts, the Dragon riders spent a total of six months preparing for any type of emergency during the flight — even though the capsule is computerized.
SpaceX’s shared a webcast of the Inspiration4 mission launch, which went live four hours before takeoff.
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Before the launch, SpaceX director Benji Reed said: “It gives me goosebumps even right now to talk about it.”
SpaxeX describes the Inspiration4 mission as “part of Jared’s ambitious fundraising goal to give hope to all kids with cancer and other life-threatening diseases.”
Secondly, during the three-day journey in orbit, the Inspiration4 crew “will conduct scientific research designed to advance human health on Earth and during future long-duration spaceflights,” SpaceX explains.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from a Kennedy Space Center pad and the Dragon capsule aimed to reach an altitude of 357 miles.
SpaceX says the Dragon will fly “farther than any human spaceflight since the Hubble missions.”
“Dragon’s new cupola observation dome will be the largest contiguous space window ever flown,” Space X explains on its website. “The three-layer observation dome, which was extensively tested and qualified for flight in six months, replaces the mechanism used on Dragon’s previous flight to dock to the International Space Station.”
Before the flight, Isaacman told reporters how he wanted the rocket “to go higher.”
“If we’re going to go to the moon again and we’re going to go to Mars and beyond, then we’ve got to get a little outside of our comfort zone and take the next step in that direction,” he said.
Isaacman’s Pennslyvania-based Shift4 Payments company is paying the full cost for the flight but has not revealed the amount, The Associated Press reports.
The next SpaceX private trip, set for 2022, will see three wealthy businessmen joining a retired NASA astronaut for a weeklong visit to the space station.
And in the upcoming months, the Russians are launching a film director, an actress, and a Japanese tycoon to the space station.
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