SpaceX set to launch first all-civilian crew into orbit : No professional astronauts

The 1st All-Civilian Crew Is About To Orbit The Earth

For the first time, a group of all civilians, four in total, will take flight aboard a SpaceX mission set to launch Wednesday night.

The commander of the flight, Jared Isaacman is the founder and billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments; he will be joined by Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; Chris Sembroski, an aerospace data engineer; and pilot and geoscientist Sian Proctor.

It’s the latest step in the commercialization of space. By going into orbit, the crew of four will travel further into space than the recent privately funded Blue Origin mission which had Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos on board.
It has not been disclosed how much Isaacman paid to for him and the crew to get sent into space.

The mission, dubbed Inspiration4, will help support Isaacman’s goal to raise $200 million to help cure children’s cancer. While in orbit, the crew will also conduct research “designed to advance human health on Earth and during future long-duration spaceflights,” according to SpaceX.

The launch is set to take place from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The five hour launch window begins Wednesday evening. The astronauts will land off the coast of Florida approximately three days later.

How civilians train for space flight

How do civilians train to go into space, you might be wondering? There’s some crossover with how astronauts themselves train.

Since March, the Inspiration4 crew has completed centrifuge training, simulations, observing other SpaceX launches, zero-gravity plane training, altitude training, classroom training and medical testing, SpaceX says.

“This focused preparation was essential in team development and being ready to execute their role as the first commercial crew to orbit the Earth,” the Inspiration4 website says.

It’s also worth mentioning that SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft largely functions on its own and doesn’t require much human input to operate.

The crew arrived in Florida on Thursday from Hawthorne, Calif., where they had been training.
Out-of-this-world memorabilia will take flight, too

Space memorabilia is not a new thing. Astronauts have been taking up personal items and bringing back pieces of history since human space flight began.

Watch SpaceX launch 4 civilians into orbit for Inspiration 4

SpaceX set to launch first all-civilian crew into orbit

The three-day expedition will be the first mission to space without any professional astronauts on board.

Four private citizens are set to launch into orbit Wednesday in what will be the first mission to space without any professional astronauts on board.

The all-civilian crew will ride to space aboard a rocket and capsule developed by SpaceX.

The mission, dubbed Inspiration4, is just the latest milestone flight in what has been a busy year for private spaceflight companies, following joyrides to suborbital space by billionaire entrepreneurs Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos over the summer.

Another billionaire, Jared Isaacman, is set to lead the historic all-civilian mission. Isaacman, the 38-year-old founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, a Pennsylvania-based payment processing company, paid an unspecified amount for the three-day expedition in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.

The spacecraft is scheduled to launch Wednesday atop a reusable Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The five-hour launch window opens at 8:02 p.m. EDT, and SpaceX is planning to broadcast the event live. Forecasts currently project a 70 percent chance of favorable weather conditions for the evening launch.

The Crew Dragon capsule will spend three days circling Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Florida, according to SpaceX.

“From the start of this mission, I’ve been very aware of how fortunate we are to be part of this history SpaceX is creating right now,” Isaacman said Tuesday in a preflight briefing, adding that the orbital outing is designed to inspire people.

No professional astronauts: SpaceX will launch first all-civilian crew into orbit tonight

Paying for it all is Jared Isaacman, a 38-year-old billionaire high-school dropout, who is promoting the flight as massive fundraising effort for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Issacman, a pilot who is qualified to fly commercial and military jets, reached a deal with SpaceX in late 2020 for the mission. Neither is saying how much he is paying SpaceX for the launch, though Isaacman has said it was far less than $200 million he hopes to raise for St. Jude.

“This dream began 10 months ago,” Isaacman said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon, noting how quickly the mission came together. “We set out from the start to deliver a very inspiring message, certainly the opportunities up in space and what can be done there. But also what we can accomplish here on Earth.

Jared Isaacman

Jared Isaacman is an American billionaire businessman and pilot.

(born February 11, 1983)

He is the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, a payment processor.

In 2005, Isaacman founded a retail payment processing company named United Bank Card, which was later renamed Harbortouch, a point-of-sale payment company based in Pennsylvania.

He was the founding CEO, and retained that role in 2015 with the company having “been profitable for over a decade [while processing] US$11 billion a year from 60,000 merchants, generating US$300 million in revenues.” By 2020, the company had been renamed Shift4 Payments, Isaacman remained CEO, and the company was processing US$200 billion in payments annually.

Spaceflight
In February 2021, Isaacman announced that he would serve as commander of Inspiration4, the first private human spaceflight where none of the people aboard are from a government agency.

The mission, operated by SpaceX, will fly on board an autonomous Crew Dragon spacecraft launched by a Falcon 9 launch vehicle.

Inspiration4 is scheduled to launch no earlier than September 15, 2021. He received the call sign “Rook”.

Spaceflight

Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly spacecraft into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board.

Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in orbit around Earth, but also includes space probes for flights beyond Earth orbit. Such spaceflight operates either by telerobotic or autonomous control.

The more complex human spaceflight has been pursued soon after the first orbital satellites and has reached the Moon and permanent human presence in space around Earth, particularly with the use of space stations.

Human spaceflight programs include the Soyuz, the past Apollo Moon landing and the Space Shuttle programs, with currently the International Space Station as the main destination of human spaceflight missions.

Who is spaceflight?

Spaceflight, Inc. is an American aerospace company based out of Seattle, Washington that specializes in organizing rideshare space launches of secondary payloads. … It was part of Spaceflight Industries until June 2020.

What is the meaning of human spaceflight?

Human spaceflight (also referred to as manned spaceflight or crewed spaceflight) is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft, the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew.

Who invented spaceflight?

Spaceflight began in the 20th century following theoretical and practical breakthroughs by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert H. Goddard, and Hermann Oberth.

How long is the inspiration 4 mission?

three-day
SpaceX’s Inspiration4 Mission: When to Watch the Launch. Here’s what you need to know about the three-day orbital journey of four Americans, none of them professional astronauts.

Is NASASpaceflight related to NASA?

The end of the Space Shuttle era

NASASpaceflight was conceived in the wake of the STS-107 Columbia disaster. At that time, Chris Bergin and a few people from NASA and Space Shuttle contractor United Space Alliance came up with the idea of launching a news site and modern forum as an alternative to Space.com

Commercial spaceflight industry sees Inspiration4 as a pathfinder but not a model

SpaceX’s first fully commercial Crew Dragon mission is being closely watched by both NASA and other companies in the commercial human spaceflight sector, who see it as a pathfinder for future missions but not necessity a model for them.

SpaceX is scheduled to launch the Inspiration4 mission on a Falcon 9 from the Kennedy Space Center during a five-hour window that opens at 8:02 p.m. Eastern Sept. 15.

The rocket will place a Crew Dragon spacecraft into orbit with four people on board for a three-day mission.

During a Sept. 14 briefing, Benji Reed, senior director of human spaceflight programs at SpaceX, said preparations for the mission were going well and launch weather was favorable. He added, though, that SpaceX will also have to take into account recovery weather three to four days later before making a decision to proceed with the launch.

SpaceX rocket to take world’s first all-civilian crew into orbit

Four-person Inspiration4 mission will orbit Earth for up to four days and marks latest step in space tourism

The world’s first crew of “amateur astronauts” is preparing to blast off on a mission that will carry them into orbit around Earth before bringing them back home at the weekend.

The four civilians, who have spent the past few months on an astronaut training crash course, are due to launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8.02pm local time on Wednesday (1.02am UK time on Thursday).

Barring any glitches, the two men and two women on the Inspiration4 mission are expected to orbit the planet for three or four days, performing experiments and admiring the view through a glass dome fitted to their Dragon capsule, before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.

Touted as “the world’s first all-civilian mission to orbit”, the launch is the latest to promote the virtues of space tourism and follows sub-orbital flights in July by Sir Richard Branson on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo – which has since been grounded for going off course – and Jeff Bezos on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.