TEXAS: SpaceX Inspiration4 mission blasts off on history-making journey to orbit

TEXAS: Add four more names to the
short list of human beings who’ve traveled beyond the edge of Earth. On
Wednesday evening, commander Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor and
Chris Sembroski blasted into space aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon as part of the
Inspiration4 mission. 

SpaceX’s
Falcon 9 engines roared to life at 5:03 p.m. PT and blazed a trail through the
Florida night sky. It’s the first time a mission has launched a crew composed
of private citizens to orbit — there
are no professional astronauts on board. Hollering
and cheering were heard during the livestream as the raucous team at
SpaceX celebrated each milestone of the launch.

At around
10 minutes in, the Falcon 9 rocket returned to Earth, landing on a SpaceX
droneship parked in the Atlantic Ocean. It was a flawless return, a feat that
has become customary for the staple reusable booster in Elon Musk’s SpaceX
fleet.

Two and a
half minutes after the first stage came back to Earth, Crew Dragon separated
from the second stage. As the livestream camera cut to views inside the
spacecraft, a plush golden retriever doll began floating around the cockpit —
a mascot for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which the mission aims to
raise $200 million for. 

“Few
have come before, and many are about to follow,” Isaacman said in his
first communication with SpaceX mission control after launch.

“The
door’s open now, and it’s pretty incredible,” he said.

Civilians, tourists, astronauts

Space has
seen a number of high-profile, incredibly rich tourists in the past few months.
The so-called “billionaire space race” kicked off in July, when
Richard Branson rode his Virgin Galactic space
plane to the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere. Shortly after,
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos rode his rocket a little further. Whether they
made it to “space,” though, has been hotly debated. Most space
watchers agree these short suborbital trips aren’t quite the same as getting
into low Earth orbit.

There
will be no debate about the Inspiration4 mission. This flight takes the crew of
four higher than Bezos or Branson and is different from those flights in key
ways, even if it was bankrolled by another billionaire in Isaacman.

When SpaceX announced the mission in February,
Isaacman bought up the entire flight and donated three of the Crew Dragon seats
to “individuals from the general public.” He offered up two seats to
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, handpicking Arceneaux, a childhood
cancer survivor who now works as a physician’s assistant at the hospital and
acts as the medical officer on Inspiration4. 

The
second was offered in a raffle for those who made a donation to the hospital.
The seat was won by a friend of Sembroski, who gifted him the seat. Sembroski
is the mission specialist and will help manage payload science
experiments. 

Proctor,
a geology professor at South Mountain Community College, won an online
competition run by Isaacman to round out the crew. She is the first Black woman
to pilot a spacecraft.

The
mission is more than just a joyride for space tourists, though. All four
members have undergone months of intense training, far more than those who will
fly with Bezos’s Blue Origin or Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and they’ll be
performing science experiments during the three-day trip. 

The
spacecraft will orbit 585 kilometers (around
363 miles) above the Earth, about 100 miles farther out than the
International Space Station. Physiological data of the crew will be collected
to assess changes in behavior and cognition, and there will be “research
grade” analysis of heart rate, blood oxygen saturation and how well the
team members sleep. 

The
Crew Dragon is outfitted with a brand new cupola, a transparent dome at its apex,
that will give the passengers incredible views of the Earth. It’s the first
time the cupola has been used in flight — the space is usually reserved for
ISS docking tools. Expect to see some breathtaking photos of our giant blue
marble in the coming days. 

In flying
above the orbital height of the ISS, SpaceX and the crew are taking a risk,
too. The Dragon capsule, whether outfitted for crew or for supply runs, hasn’t
ever reached such heights. Testing its limits on Earth is one thing, but space
is inherently risky — as countless NASA missions attest to since the Mercury
era. 

The team
is going to spend three days in orbit, making one full lap of the Earth every
90 minutes. It’s expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on Saturday, blazing
hot, before splashing down off the Florida coast.   

It’s also
one of the busiest times for human spaceflight in history. For the next few
days, 14 human beings will be in orbit, with three members stationed on China’s
space station, seven on the ISS and now the four on the Inspiration4 flight.
This has been touted as an all-time record for the space population, but that’s
debated. During Branson’s suborbital flight, the number of people in
“space” was often quoted as “16,” but the definition of
where space begins is a little blurry. 

Still, if
the door’s now open for private citizens to get to space, as Isaacman believes,
that record will be shattered over the next decade.