SpaceX has launched the world’s first amateur astronaut crew on a private flight to encircle Earth for three days.
The success of the launch on Wednesday night marked the most ambitious leap in space tourism to date. It is the first passenger flight chartered for Elon Musk’s space company and the first time a rocket has been launched into orbit with a crew that did not contain professional astronauts.
“It amazes me, honestly,” SpaceX director Benji Reed said on the eve of the launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. “Even right now it gives me goosebumps to talk about it.”
At the helm of the flight is 38-year-old Jared Isaacman, who made a fortune with a payment processing company that began in his teens. Isaacman is the third billionaire to launch this summer, after the flights of Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin in July.
Isaacman is joined by Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a survivor of childhood cancer who works as a physician’s assistant at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Isaacman has pledged $ 100 million of his own to the hospital and is looking for another $ 100 million in donations.
Also taking part are raffle winners Chris Sembroki, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington, and Sian Proctor, 51, an educator at a community college in Tempe, Arizona.
Arceneaux will become the youngest American in space and the first person in space with a prosthesis, a titanium wand on his left leg.
Passengers will spend three days orbiting the Earth at an unusually high altitude of 575 kilometers (160 kilometers) higher than the International Space Station, before exploding off the coast of Florida this weekend.
While NASA has no role in the process, its administrators and astronauts are taking root in flight, called 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 space stay.
Isaacman, an experienced pilot, convinced SpaceX to carry the Dragon’s capsule higher than it has ever been. Initially reluctant due to increased radiation exposure and other risks, SpaceX agreed after a safety review.
“Now I just wish we could push them to go higher,” Isaacman told reporters on the eve of the flight. “If we’re going to go to the moon again and go to Mars and beyond, we’re going to have to get a little out of our comfort zone and take the next step in that direction.”
Isaacman is collecting the entire flight record, but he won’t say how many millions he paid.
Although the capsule is automated, the four Dragon pilots spent six months training for the flight to deal with any emergency. This training included centrifugal and fighter jet flights, launch and re-entry practices in the SpaceX capsule simulator, and an exhausting ride down Washington’s Mount Rainier in the snow.
Four hours before takeoff, the four left the huge SpaceX rocket hangar, greeting and kissing their families and company employees, before being kicked out to get into their elegant white flight suits. Once on the launch pad, they posed for a photo and collided with their glove cuffs, before climbing the elevator. Proctor danced as he headed for the door.
SpaceX’s next private trip early next year will see a retired NASA astronaut escort three rich businessmen to the space station for a week-long visit. The Russians will launch an actor, a film director and a Japanese tycoon on the space station in the coming months.
Once opposed to space tourism, NASA is now in favor. The move from government astronauts to non-professionals “is simply disconcerting,” said former NASA administrator Charles Bolden, a former commander of the space shuttle.
“Someday NASA astronauts will be the exception, not the rule,” said Mason Peck of Cornell University, a professor of engineering who served as NASA’s chief technologist nearly a decade ago. “But they will probably continue to be the pioneers that the rest of us will follow.”