Elon Musk’s SpaceX to make history with all-civilian crew going where none has gone before – into Earth orbit
- Jared Isaacman, American founder and chief executive of e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments, will lead a crew of four on the trip expected to last three days
- The four passengers will be carried into the Earth’s orbit where they’ll circle the globe once every 90 minutes at more than 17,000 miles per hour
Yet another billionaire entrepreneur is set to ride into space this week, strapped inside the capsule of a SpaceX rocket ship, as part of an astro-tourist team poised to make history as the first all-civilian crew launched into Earth’s orbit.
Jared Isaacman, the American founder and chief executive of e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments, will lead three fellow space flight novices on a trip expected to last three days from blast-off at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to splashdown in the Atlantic.
The 38-year-old tech mogul has plunked down an unspecified but presumably exorbitant sum to fellow billionaire and SpaceX owner Elon Musk to fly Isaacman and three specially selected travel mates into orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
The crew vehicle is set for blast-off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre atop one of Musk’s reusable Falcon 9 rockets, with a 24-hour targeted launch window that opens at 8pm EDT on Wednesday (8am Thursday HKT). That window will be narrowed, or possibly altered, beforehand, depending on weather.
Dubbed Inspiration4, the orbital outing was conceived by Isaacman primarily to raise awareness and support for one of his favourite causes, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a leading paediatric cancer centre. He has pledged US$100 million personally to the institute.
But a successful mission would also help usher in a new era of commercial space tourism, with several companies vying for wealthy customers willing to pay a small fortune to experience the exhilaration of supersonic flight, weightlessness and the visual spectacle of space.