A billionaire, a medical assistant, a geoscience professor and an engineer launched into space aboard a SpaceX capsule at the ultimate milestone for the commercial space industry: the first time all a crew of non-professional astronauts came into orbit.
The mission, known as Inspiration4, withdrew shortly after 5 p.m., Pacific Time, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The capsule separated from the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket about 12 minutes after takeoff. The crew will be orbiting the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for three days at an altitude of about 357 miles above Earth before exploding off the coast of Florida.
The mission is different from previous manned launches into orbit. On the one hand, it was not the idea of a national government, but of billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, 38, who founded the payment processing company Shift4 Payments. Isaacman bought an entire SpaceX capsule for himself and three others for an undisclosed price and will serve as the mission commander.
“Few have come before, and many are about to follow them,” he said in a live broadcast of the launch after the capsule hit space. “The door opens now and it’s pretty amazing.”
With the launch, Isaacman aimed to raise $ 200 million for St. John’s Children’s Research Hospital. Jude. He pledged to donate $ 100 million to the hospital and announced a raffle in February in which people interested in going to the space could donate money and participate in a raffle to win one of the remaining three seats.
This seat ended for Chris Sembroki, a Lockheed Martin engineer who entered the draw, did not win, but will go into space anyway after a friend who won the seat transfers the prize to him, according to the New York Times. Sembroki is a mission specialist on board the flight.
Another place in the capsule was awarded to Sian Proctor, a longtime geoscience professor at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, who was a 2009 finalist in NASA’s astronaut program and is a trained pilot. Proctor won its place in an online business competition run by the e-commerce platform Shift4Shop, owned by the Isaacman company.
She is the pilot of the capsule and is the first black woman to pilot a spaceship. A minute before the launch, he made a sign with his thumbs up on a camera inside the capsule, following it seconds later with a chorus; about nine minutes after takeoff, after mission control shouted that the capsule was making a “nominal” or normal orbit insertion, it gave another thumb up.
The fourth seat was awarded to Hayley Arceneaux, St. Mary’s assistant physician. Jude and survivor of a childhood cancer who was treated at the hospital. Arceneaux is the flight medical officer. At 29, she is the youngest American to go into space and the first to fly with a prosthetic body part: a part of her femur is metallic.
The crew trained for months before their mission, rehearsing contingency plans for emergencies, practicing in a capsule simulator and learning about the human health research they plan to conduct during the flight.
Wednesday’s launch comes after a highly publicized summer of billionaires launching into suborbital space.
In July, British billionaire Richard Branson and a crew of five other Virgin Galactic employees arrived on the edge of space on the Branson Company spacecraft, the first time the spacecraft flew with a full crew. on board. Then, days later, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos flew into suborbital space with three others aboard the rocket and capsule system of his space company Blue Origin.
Both companies plan to offer suborbital space travel to paying tourists, a business plan each has claimed will open up space beyond the limited number of professional astronauts or the few wealthy private astronauts who have flown to the space station.
Critics say the high cost of tickets (Virgin Galactic has recently reopened its sales with seat prices starting at $ 450,000) will limit space travel for the wealthiest and that billionaires could have used their funds to support worthy causes closer to home.
In addition to Isaac, Wednesday’s flight crew was a group of ordinary people who are not extremely wealthy, which could “excite many people” who have their own dreams of space flight, said Alan Ladwig, author of book “See You in Orbit”. “Our Dream of Spaceflight” and a former NASA official.
But aside from contests and sweepstakes, space flight for an average person will continue to be limited, at least for now.
“There will be a handful of people who will get in there, but in terms of everyone being able to fulfill their dream of flying, of the millions of people who have that dream, I think we’re a few years away from that.” “Ladwig said.”
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.