SpaceX is preparing to launch the first all-civilian crew into orbit

September 12 (Reuters) – Another billionaire businessman will have to travel into space this week, tied inside the capsule of a SpaceX rocket, as part of an astro-tourism team ready to make history as the first crew fully civilian launched into Earth orbit.

Jared Isaacman, the founder and CEO of U.S. e-commerce company Shift4 Payments (FOUR.N), will lead three new space flight mates on a trip that is expected to last three days since the explosion in Cape Canaveral, Florida, until the fall in the Atlantic.

The 38-year-old tech mogul has dropped an unspecified, but presumably exorbitant, sum for fellow billionaire and SpaceX owner Elon Musk to fly Isaacman and three specially selected fellow travelers into orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

The crew’s vehicle is ready for the explosion from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center aboard one of Musk’s reusable Falcon 9 rockets, with a 24-hour launch window that opens at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT) Wednesday. This window will shrink or possibly change a few days in advance, depending on the weather.

Nicknamed Inspiration4, Isaacman conceived the orbital exit primarily to raise awareness and support one of his favorite causes, St. John’s Children’s Research Hospital. Jude, a leading center for pediatric cancer. He has personally pledged $ 100 million to the institute.

But a successful mission would also help usher in a new era of commercial space tourism, with several companies competing for wealthy clients willing to pay a small fortune to experience the exciting supersonic flight, weightlessness and visual spectacle of the space.

Establishing acceptable levels of risk for the consumer in the intrinsically dangerous effort of rocket travel is also key and raises a timely question.

“Do you have to be rich and brave to get on these flights right now?” Sridhar Tayur, a professor of operations management and new business models at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said in an interview with Reuters on Friday.

BEYOND THE MILLIONAIRE SPACE RACE

SpaceX is easily the most established player in the growing constellation of commercial rockets, as it has launched numerous payloads and astronauts on the International Space Station for NASA.

Rival companies Virgin Galactic (SPCE.N) and Blue Origin have recently held their first astrotourism missions with their respective founding executives (billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos), who both went for the ride.

But these two high-profile flights had a suborbital scale, which sent their crews of citizen astronauts into space and returned in a matter of minutes.

The SpaceX flight is designed to carry its four passengers where no fully civilian crew has gone before, into Earth orbit.

There, they will travel around the world once every 90 minutes at over 17,000 miles per hour, or about 22 times the speed of sound. The target altitude is 575 kilometers, or nearly 360 miles high, beyond the orbits of the International Space Station or even the Hubble Space Telescope.

Like Blue Origin, the 20-story SpaceX launch vehicle and crew crew will take off vertically from the launch pad of a flight directed completely from the ground.

By contrast, Branson’s suborbital rocket aircraft had two highly trained pilots at the controls as it carried its four rear seat passengers 50 miles high.

The Inspiration4 crew will have no part to play in their spaceship, despite some mostly honorary titles, although two members – Isaacman and geoscientist Sian Proctor – are licensed pilots.

Isaacman, who is classified as piloting commercial and military aircraft, has taken on the role of “commander” of the mission, while Proctor, 51, once a NASA astronaut candidate, has been named “pilot” of the mission. She was selected to join the team through an online contest run by Shift4 Payments.

The crew is completed by 29-year-old “chief physician” Hayley Arceneaux, a survivor of bone cancer who has become a St. Mary’s medical assistant. Jude, and mission “specialist” Chris Sembroki, 42, a U.S. Air Force veteran and aerospace data engineer. He won a spot in a raffle that attracted 72,000 applicants and raised more than $ 100 million in donations from St. Jude.

The four crew members have spent the last five months making rigorous preparations, including height fitness, centrifuge (G-force), microgravity and simulator training, emergency drills, classroom work and medical examinations.

Inspiration4 officials stress that the mission is more than a joy ride. Once in orbit, the crew will conduct medical experiments with “possible applications for human health on Earth and during future space flights,” the group said in its press materials.

Appearing in a promotional clip for a Netflix documentary series (NFLX.O) about the mission, Arceneaux said much of his motivation was to ignite hopes in his cancer patients.

“I’m going to show them what life can be like after cancer,” he said.

Report by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles, edited by Rosalba O’Brien

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