This year, an American billionaire who made a fortune in software and fighter jets is buying an entire SpaceX flight and is hoping to take three people around the orbit with him.
Jared Isaacman is the founder of the credit processing company Shift4 Payments, which is launching the Inspiration4 project with the hope of raising $200 million for the Tennessee-based St. Jude Research Hospital, with half coming from his own pockets.
The four-person expedition will take off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and orbit around Earth in SpaceX’s Dragon craft late this year – the duration of the mission has yet to be known.
A health care worker from St. Jude has already been chosen and anyone donating to the hospital will be entered into a random draw for seat number three during February, and the fourth will go to a company owner who uses Shift4 Payments.
“I truly want us to live in a world 50 or 100 years from now where people are jumping in their rockets like the Jetsons and there are families bouncing around on the moon with their kid in a spacesuit,” said Isaacman.
“I also think if we are going to live in that world, we better conquer childhood cancer along the way.”
Details of the SpaceX Dragon capsule trip are still being sorted out, including the number of days that the four will be in orbit from Florida after lifting off.
Before moving to the last frontier, the Inspiration4 crew will not go into space blind but will undergo commercial astronaut training from SpaceX on the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and other stress test forms like orbital mechanics, operating in microgravity and zero gravity.
Following the announcement of SpaceX Founder and CEO Elon Musk told NBC News’ Tom Costello, “Any mission where there’s a crew on board makes me nervous.” He added, “The risk is not zero.”
“When you’ve got a brand new mode of transportation, you have to have pioneered. Things are expensive at first, and as you’re able to increase the launch rate, increase the production rate, refine the technology, it becomes less expensive and accessible to more people.’
“We’ll all be with Jared on the journey and we’ll be seeing it in real-time. It’s an important milestone on the road toward making access to space more affordable.”
The crew will swing around Earth once every 90 minutes following a designated flight path during the ‘multi-day’ trip, and once done, the capsule will re-enter the atmosphere and splashdown off the coast of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean.
Source: Daily Mail