Artykuły o Inspiration4

[Orionid]

To Get on This SpaceX Flight, You Don’t Have to Be Rich, Just Lucky
By Kenneth Chang Published Feb. 1, 2021 Updated March 30, 2021

Jared Isaacman, 37-year-old founder of Shift4 Payments, is chartering a trip to orbit and raffling a seat to a random winner to raise money for childhood cancer research.


The Crew Dragon capsule atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral in 2019.Credit...Joel Kowsky/NASA

A new era is opening in spaceflight, a future where anyone — at least anyone with tens of millions of dollars — can buy a rocket ride to see Earth from a couple of hundred miles up.

Jared Isaacman, a 37-year-old billionaire, announced on Monday that he was essentially chartering a rocket and spacecraft from SpaceX, the company started by Elon Musk, for a three- or four-day trip to space.

Scheduled to launch in October, it is to be the first mission to orbit where none of the people aboard is a professional astronaut from NASA or another government space agency.

Mr. Isaacman’s announcement follows last week’s report of a private mission, also on a SpaceX vessel, to the International Space Station. Three customers are paying $55 million each for an eight-day stay, which would occur as soon as next January.

“We want to work towards a Jetsons-like world,” Mr. Isaacman said in an interview. He is founder and chief executive of Shift4 Payments, a company that sells credit-card-processing terminals and point-of-sale systems to restaurants and other businesses.

And one of the people going on the trip, named Inspiration4, could be you.

There are four seats in current SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules, and Mr. Isaacman is looking for fellow travelers who are not super wealthy.

He is giving two of the seats to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, which treats children at no charge and develops cures for childhood cancers as well as other diseases.

One of those seats will go to a frontline health care worker at St. Jude. “Actually a former cancer survivor, who was treated at St. Jude and has come back and is an employee there today,” Mr. Isaacman said.

He and hospital officials did not name the St. Jude employee on Monday.

The other seat will be raffled off to someone at random, with the goal of raising at least $200 million for St. Jude. You do not need to donate to enter for a chance at the trip to space, but each dollar donated counts as 10 entries, up to 10,000 entries.

Only United States citizens and legal permanent residents 18 or older can enter the raffle. Someone selected for the trip must be under 6 feet, 6 inches in height, weigh less than 250 pounds and pass psychological and physical tests.

“If you can go on a roller coaster ride, like an intense roller coaster ride, you should be fine for flying on Dragon,” Mr. Musk said during a news conference on Monday.

Mr. Isaacman declined to disclose how much he is paying for his private mission to space, but said, “It’s very safe to say that what we aim to raise in support of that cause is going to be far in excess of the cost of the mission.”

He said he had committed to personally donating $100 million. “If you’re going to accomplish all those great things out in space, all that progress, then you have an obligation to do some considerable good here on Earth, like making sure you conquer childhood cancer along the way,” he said.


Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of Shift4 Payments, is also an accomplished pilot.Credit...Tim Pannell for Forbes

The fourth seat in the Crew Dragon will go to an entrepreneur in a “Shark Tank”-like contest run by Shift4. Details of the entrepreneurial contest are posted on the Shift4 website.

The winners of the St. Jude sweepstakes and the Shift4 competition will be selected in about a month. The crew members will then be fitted for spacesuits and begin training.

“Let’s have fun and like inspire the public and get people fired up about the future,” Mr. Musk said.

This will not be the first time Mr. Isaacman has gone far and fast. He flies fighter jets for fun, and in 2012, he founded Draken International, which owns fighter jets and provides training for pilots in the United States military. He periodically told people at SpaceX that he was interested in going to space someday.

“I’ve been a SpaceX fanboy for a long time,” Mr. Isaacman said. “I’ve been a space enthusiast since I was in kindergarten.”

SpaceX developed the Crew Dragon for NASA to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The first crewed mission, with two NASA astronauts, Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley, launched in May last year. The second carried four astronauts there in November, and a third crew is to make the trip in the spring.

Mr. Musk said the current plan was for Mr. Isaacman’s to ride in Resilience, the capsule that launched in November and is currently docked at the space station.

After the successful first mission by Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley, Mr. Isaacman again asked his SpaceX contacts to keep him in mind. This time, “The response back was, ‘I think we’re ready to have that conversation,’” he said, “and things went very, very quick from there.”

Mr. Isaacman intends to be more than a passenger. He will learn how to operate the spacecraft and serve as its commander.

“That’s just kind of in my DNA,” he said.

The Crew Dragon, on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will circle Earth for several days before splashing down off the coast of Florida.

His trip will not be the only one to take private astronauts to orbit in the months ahead. A mission operated by Axiom Space of Houston will take three men to the International Space Station. Axiom is also building a commercial module to add to the space station and eventually aims to run commercial orbiting outposts of its own.

Private citizens have traveled to the space station, but those trips, between 2000 and 2009, were arranged by a space tourism company, Space Adventures, and operated by the Russian space agency, providing single seats in its Soyuz capsules next to professional astronauts. At the time, NASA officials disliked visits by wealthy tourists to the space station, but the agency began encouraging more commercial endeavors during the Trump administration.

In 2019, NASA announced new policies to encourage business at the space station, including charging $35,000 a night for visitors to stay there, to cover the cost of amenities like water, air, an internet connection and the toilet.

Axiom is the first company to take advantage of the NASA accommodations. Its first customers are Larry Connor, managing partner of the Connor Group, a firm in Dayton, Ohio that owns and operates luxury apartments; Mark Pathy, chief executive of Mavrik Corporation, a Canadian investment company; and Eytan Stibbe, an investor and former Israeli Air Force pilot. The three did not know one another previously.

“I think we shared the same vision, and that vision is about doing this correctly, about conducting worthwhile research and experiments, about measuring up to the highest standards set by NASA and the astronauts,” Mr. Connor said in an interview. “So I’m pretty confident that the team will function well together.”

Mr. Connor, who will be 71 when he launches next year, is to be the second-oldest person to ever fly to space, after John Glenn who flew on the space shuttle at age 77. He said that during his time in space, he was looking to conduct some research for the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

The commander of the space station trip will be an Axiom vice president, Michael López-Alegría, who is a former NASA astronaut. Another former NASA astronaut, Peggy A. Whitson, is the backup commander.

Mr. López-Alegría said Axiom originally planned to sell all four seats. “I think we began to understand fairly quickly that the demand was really to have somebody with experience be with them,” he said. “And I think that makes NASA a lot happier as well. So I happened to be the guy in the room who had been to space before.”

He expected that he would spend most of his time at the space station helping Mr. Connor, Mr. Pathy and Mr. Stibbe.

“It’s going to be, in some ways, more like a work supervisor than a cruise director,” Mr. López-Alegría said.

In an interview, Mr. Connor acknowledged that many people question the value of rich people paying millions for trips like this. “I get that people have questions,” he said. “People criticize, ‘Hey, with all the problems that are going on, why in the world are these guys spending all of this money to go into space?’”

But he replied that Kids & Community Partners, the charity arm of his company, was planning to spend $400 million over the next 10 years on programs to help children and to finance medical research. In all, he said he will eventually donate half of his net worth to charities. And about 30 percent of his wealth will go to what the company calls “key associates.”

“Only 20 percent is going to remain in my family,” Mr. Connor said. “So I guess I was just hoping that if people are going to criticize or vilify me for doing this, they’d at least have the context of what I believe.”

Mr. Musk also said that expensive trips like this were needed to bring the cost down for future space travelers. “This is an important milestone towards enabling access to space for everyone,” he said.

Space Adventures announced last year that it, too, had an agreement with SpaceX to launch a Crew Dragon to take tourists on a trip in orbit around Earth, but it has not provided more details about when that mission might take off. It has also resumed the selling of tourist trips to the space station on Russian Soyuz rockets. Two clients are scheduled to launch on a flight later this year.

Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese fashion entrepreneur, has also signed up for a SpaceX tourist trip, but that would be an around-the-moon voyage several years from now, on a giant rocket called Starship that is still under development.

Those who cannot afford an orbital trip will soon have cheaper options, in the price range of hundreds of thousands of dollars, for short up-and-down jaunts to the edge of space and back, where they can experience a few minutes of weightlessness.

Virgin Galactic, which was founded by Richard Branson, has already completed several crewed flights of its space plane; its next test is scheduled for the middle of the month. Blue Origin, from Jeffrey P. Bezos of Amazon, has launched its suborbital New Shepard capsule without people and could conduct its first test flights with passengers this year.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/01/science/spacex-jared-isaacman.html

[Orionid]

Entrepreneur purchases SpaceX Crew Dragon mission
by Jeff Foust — February 1, 2021 [SN]


Jared Isaacman sitting inside a Crew Dragon spacecraft. He purchased a Crew Dragon flight for an all-civilian mission called Inspiration4 flying as soon as the fourth quarter of 2021. Credit: Inspiration4

WASHINGTON — An entrepreneur has purchased a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission slated for launch late this year that will include three other people as part of a project that is a mix of charity and commerce.

SpaceX announced Feb. 1 that Jared Isaacman, the founder and chief executive of online payment processing company Shift4 Payments, purchased the mission, scheduled for launch no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2021. Isaacman will be one of the four people to fly on the spacecraft, which will spend two to four days in low Earth orbit but not dock with the International Space Station.

Isaacman is calling the mission “Inspiration4” and is working with both his own company and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to identify the other three people who will accompany him on the first “all-civilian” orbital spaceflight.

“The three crew members we are selecting come from everyday walks of life, including a front-line health care worker who’s committed to helping kids fight cancer, someone who visits our mission’s website and makes a donation, and an inspiring entrepreneur building a business,” he said in a call with reporters about the mission. “Thirty days from now they’re going to get fitted for a spacesuit.”

One of the three people will be a health care worker at St. Jude who has apparently already been selected. “I know she’s looking forward to the launch as much as me,” he said of that individual, whom he did not name.

The second person will be selected from what is effectively a raffle. People buy entries on the Inspiration4 website, with the money going to St. Jude. Isaacman said he expected that contest to raise at least $100 million, plus $100 million he is donating directly to the hospital.

The third person will be selected from a contest affiliated with Shift4 Payments. Participants can start an online store using the company’s platform and submit a video to be reviewed by a “panel of celebrity judges,” with the winner joining the crew of the mission.

The winners will join Isaacman for what he calls a “pretty extensive training plan” to both prepare for the flight and to get to know each other long before they spend several days in a small capsule. “I am going to ensure that I introduce some very uncomfortable and stressful situations here on Earth long before we go up in space,” he said. “I intend to get four people into a tent that I can attest is absolutely smaller than the Dragon spacecraft on a mountain when it’s snowing out and introduce everybody to some really stressful situations.”

Neither he nor SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said much about the medical requirements for the participants. “I’ve already gone through the SpaceX medical screening process, and I can tell you that the attitude is about how do you get someone into space, and not how you ground them,” Isaacman said.

“If you can go on a roller-coaster ride, you should be fine for going on Dragon,” Musk said. The official rules of the competition do require people to be at least 18 years old, no taller than 1.98 meters, no heavier than 113.4 kilograms and “physically and psychologically fit for training and Spaceflight.”

The rules also limit participation to “U.S. persons” as defined under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which includes citizens and permanent residents. Musk, though, seemed to think others could fly. “It’s not out of the question that someone who is not a U.S. citizen could fly,” he said when asked about that limitation.

Isaacman did not disclose how much he was paying for the flight or other expenses associated with the project, such as an ad that will air during the Super Bowl Feb. 7. “What we aim to raise in terms of those funds and the amount of good it will do,” he said of the $200 million goal, “will certainly far exceed the cost of the mission itself.”

Musk said commercial missions like this one will contribute to SpaceX’s development of its Starship vehicle. SpaceX has agreements for other Crew Dragon commercial missions with Axiom Space and Space Adventures, with the Axiom Space Ax-1 mission launching no earlier than January 2022.

“We have to fund the Starship program somehow, and this mission will help fund the Starship program,” he said.

The Inspiration4 mission will use the Crew Dragon spacecraft called “Resilience” that is currently docked to the International Space Station for NASA’s Crew-1 mission. “We will, of course, coordinate this with NASA,” Musk said. “NASA has been very generous and is supportive.”

NASA offered its support in a tweet. “Excited to see one of the original goals of @Commercial_Crew come to be with the expansion of new commercial activities beyond our own in low-Earth orbit,” said Kathy Lueders, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations and the former manager of the commercial crew program, referring to the Inspiration4 announcement.

The 37-year-old Isaacman, a pilot, said the flight is the realization of a dream that dates back to his childhood. “I remember actually — very true story — telling my kindergarten teacher that some day I’m going to space,” he recalled.

Musk, too, is interested in going to space someday. “I’ll be on a flight one day, but not this one.”

Source: https://spacenews.com/entrepreneur-purchases-spacex-crew-dragon-mission/

[Orionid]

Contest for Crew Dragon seat well short of fundraising goal
by Jeff Foust — February 16, 2021 [SN]


Jared Isaacman said Inspiration4 will continue to raise $100 million pledged for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital even after the end of a sweepstakes this month offering a seat on the mission. Credit: Inspiration4

WASHINGTON — A competition to raffle off a seat on an upcoming Crew Dragon mission has raised only a small fraction of its goal so far, but the contest organizers say that they will continue the fundraising effort even after the contest ends.

SpaceX and billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman announced the “Inspiration4” mission Feb. 1, which will fly Isaacman and three other people on a Crew Dragon spacecraft late this year. They will spend several days in orbit before returning to Earth.

One of the three available seats will go the winner of a sweepstakes taking place this month, intended to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. People can purchase entries through the Inspiration4 website through Feb. 28, with a winner selected on or around March 1.

However, as of early Feb. 16, the contest had raised just under $9 million, according to its website. That leaves the competition well short of the goal of $100 million, plus another $100 million that Isaacman plans to donate to St. Jude.

Brian Bianco, a spokesman for Inspiration4, said the $100 million fundraising goal goes beyond this month’s competition. “The $100 million goal was set for the duration of the mission between now and launch and we will be sharing different opportunities and incentives throughout the coming months beyond the current sweepstakes opportunities,” he told SpaceNews Feb. 15.

“This is a 2021 initiative. Crew selection process is just the first part. We are just getting started with helping raise funds for @StJude … lots more to come including the corporate contributions,” Isaacman tweeted.

That’s different from what Isaacman said when he announced the competition. “The other [seat] will be awarded through a national fundraising campaign that begins today and runs through the month of February,” he said in a Feb. 1 call with reporters, after stating that one seat would be donated to the hospital to allow one of its employees to fly on the mission. “Our goal is to raise over $200 million, and I’m contributing the first $100 million to this great effort.”

He also said at that briefing that while the contest is not intended to pay for the flight itself, which he has already funded, he hoped the money raised “will certainly far exceed the cost of the mission itself.” He did not disclose how much he paid for the flight.

Some in the industry see the competition as a way to gauge public interest in commercial human spaceflight independent of the cost. It is difficult, though, to determine the number of people participating based on amount raised alone. The contest sells entries at a rate of 10 per dollar, with a minimum purchase of $10. The maximum number of entries per person is 10,000, although the competition offers additional perks for those who donate more than $1,000. It is also possible to enter the contest without donating.

The contest has not lacked publicity. In addition to the media attention from the Feb. 1 announcement, Inspiration4 ran a 30-second ad for the contest Feb. 7 during the Super Bowl, one of the most-watched events in the United States. The ad cost the project more than $5 million for the airtime alone, based on published ad rates for the game, in addition to the cost to produce the ad itself.

One complaint many people have expressed online about the competition is that it is limited to “U.S. persons” as defined under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which includes citizens and permanent residents. Isaacman said that while he wanted to open the contest to a wider audience, the schedule of the mission made that impossible.

“The issue was timing of regulatory approval,” he tweeted . “Crew selection will be complete by first week of March… training begins mid-March. It would have been impossible to get approvals in time. International astronauts with NASA have years of notice.”

Axiom Space’s first crewed mission, Ax-1, will include Canadian and Israeli citizens on its Crew Dragon flight to the International Space Station scheduled for early 2022. The company announced the crew Jan. 26, although the Israeli participant, Eytan Stibbe, was revealed in November 2020. It’s unclear how long the approval process took for the non-U. S. crew on the flight.

Source: https://spacenews.com/contest-for-crew-dragon-seat-well-short-of-fundraising-goal/

[Orionid]

Inspiration4 announces crew for private SpaceX Crew Dragon mission
by Jeff Foust — March 30, 2021 [SN]


The four people flying on the Inspiration4 mission — Chris Sembroski, Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor and Jared Isaacman — stand at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, where their Crew Dragon will launch as soon as Sept. 15. Credit: SpaceX

WASHINGTON — The private venture that purchased a SpaceX Crew Dragon flight to low Earth orbit has finalized the crew for that mission, scheduled to launch as soon as September.

The Inspiration4 mission, which describes itself as the “world’s first all-civilian mission to space,” revealed the crew that will accompany its sponsor, entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, during a March 30 event at the Kennedy Space Center. Isaacman announced the mission Feb. 1, starting a pair of contests to select two people who would fly with him.

One of those people is Sian Proctor, a scientist and educator who has participated in a number of terrestrial “analog astronaut” missions. She won the seat called “Prosperity” by establishing an online store through Isaacman’s company, Shift4 Payments, and submitting a video judged by an independent panel.

The second is Chris Sembroski, a Lockheed Martin employee in the Seattle area. He won the “Generosity” seat by participating in a sweepstakes that raised money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

The fourth member of the crew, previously announced, is Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude who, as a child, was treated for bone cancer there. At 29, Arceneaux would be the youngest American in space.

“We promised a crew representing some of the best of humanitarian qualities, exemplifying our mission ideals of leadership, hope, prosperity and generosity,” Isaacman said. “I’m pleased to report that we’ve accomplished that goal.”

The four will start training as a group immediately, he said. That training includes time in Crew Dragon simulators, going through all aspects of the mission, as well as centrifuges to simulate the accelerations of launch and reentry and “other forms of stress testing.”

In addition to announcing the crew, Isaacman and SpaceX outlined the details of the mission itself. Launch is scheduled for no earlier than Sept. 15, slightly earlier than the original announcement of the fourth quarter of this year. The spacecraft will remain in orbit for three days, flying in an orbit at the same inclination as the International Space Station — 51.6 degrees — but in an orbit as high as 540 kilometers, more than 100 kilometers above the station.

That particular orbit, Isaacman said, will be the highest people have been above the Earth’s surface since the final shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. “It should send a message,” he said, one of going beyond the ISS. “We’re ready to go back to the moon, and we’re ready to go beyond the moon to Mars. Extending out a little bit farther than where we’ve been for some time right now is a good step in the right direction.”

The three-day mission duration, he added, “is a good balance between the capabilities of the Dragon spacecraft and how much time you want to spend in a relatively small space for a couple days together.”

Benji Reed, senior director of human spaceflight programs at SpaceX, said the company moved up the mission slightly to September to accommodate the Crew-3 launch for NASA later in the fall. “This crew, with training, we believe will be ready by September, as well as the Dragon,” he said. “It works out very well with our manifest.”

The Inspiration4 mission will use the same Dragon spacecraft, called Resilience, currently docked at the ISS for the Crew-1 mission. That spacecraft is currently scheduled to return to Earth April 28, assuming the Crew-2 mission launches to the station on schedule April 22. “We feel very good about the timeframe we’re working in” to refurbish the spacecraft for Inspiration4.


An illustration of the Crew Dragon spacecraft outfitted with a cupola in place of the docking adapter used for space station missions. Credit: SpaceX

Besides refurbishing the spacecraft, SpaceX will install an additional window on the spacecraft, a viewing port modeled on the space station’s cupola that will replace the docking adapter under the spacecraft’s nose cone. Since the Inspiration4 mission will not dock with the station, that adapter is not needed.

“It’s awesome,” Reed said of the cupola. Qualification and testing of the cupola is in progress, and Reed said SpaceX will ensure that its installation doesn’t preclude using the spacecraft for later missions, such as those to the station that will require the reinstallation of the docking adapter.

Inspiration4 will be the first Crew Dragon mission for a customer other than NASA, but it is not the only one on its manifest. Axiom Space will fly four people to the ISS on its Ax-1 mission in early 2022. Space Adventures previously announced a Crew Dragon mission that would fly well above the station, but that space tourism company has not provided any updates on its schedule for that mission.

“We’re trying to deliver an awful lot of messages with this mission,” Isaacman said. “When this mission is complete, people are going to look at it and say this was the first time that everyday people could go to space.”

However, Inspiration4 may have overestimated the interest in the mission. Proctor was one of only about 200 people who participated in the Prosperity competition, which required no expense beyond the time setting up an online store and producing a video. Sembroski was selected from nearly 72,000 entries, which could be purchased at the rate of 10 entries per dollar, up to 10,000 entries per person.

That limited interest has hurt Inspiration4’s efforts to raise money for St. Jude. The mission has raised a little less than $13 million for the hospital as of March 30, most of which was raised when the sweepstakes was open in February. That’s well short of the goal of $100 million set when Inspiration4 was announced Feb. 1.

“We’ve helped drive a significant amount of donations to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital,” Isaacman said. “This fundraising effort is really far from over. We’ll be continuing throughout the year.” He didn’t elaborate on those future fundraising plans.

Source: https://spacenews.com/inspiration4-announces-crew-for-private-spacex-crew-dragon-mission/

[Orionid]

A Billionaire Names His Team to Ride SpaceX, No Pros Allowed
Kenneth Chang By Kenneth Chang March 30, 2021

Meet the four people who will take the first all-civilian rocket trip to orbit Earth.


Jared Isaacman, left, a 38-year-old billionaire, has bought a rocket ride to orbit from SpaceX. Accompanying him on the trip will be Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor and Christopher Sembroski.Credit...SpaceX

All it takes is luck and a dream, and a 38-year-old billionaire.

Jared Isaacman, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, announced on Tuesday the names of the final two passengers who will accompany him on a three-day rocket ride circling the Earth.

By purchasing the ride from SpaceX — the company started by another billionaire, Elon Musk — Mr. Isaacman and his passengers will be the first to orbit the planet without the presence of a professional astronaut from NASA or other space agency.

The lucky recipients? Sian Proctor, 51, a community college professor from Tempe, Ariz., and Christopher Sembroski, 41, of Everett, Wash., who works on data engineering for Lockheed Martin. Both are lifelong space enthusiasts.

“The stars really aligned for us in terms of this group,” said Mr. Isaacman, who announced the purchase of the trip on Feb. 1.

The capsule and its occupants will circle Earth at an altitude of 335 miles, about 80 miles higher than the orbit of the International Space Station. The launch date, originally planned for October, may be as soon as Sept. 15, Mr. Isaacman said.

In planning the mission, Mr. Isaacman had several goals.

He said that he wanted to give nonbillionaires a chance to hitch a ride. And he wanted to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, which treats children for cancer and other diseases at no charge, including a raffle for one of the Crew Dragon seats. Mr. Isaacman also said that he hoped this space crew would be more diverse than who has gone to space in the past, mostly white men.

He seems to have succeeded.

Last month, Mr. Isaacman and St. Jude announced that one seat would go to Hayley Arceneaux, a former patient of St. Jude, who now works as a physician assistant there. Ms. Arceneaux, 29, will be the youngest American ever to go to space and the first person with a prosthetic body part. (During her treatment for bone cancer, part of the bones in her left leg were replaced by metal rods.)

Dr. Proctor, who is African-American and holds a doctorate in science education, got on board by winning a contest sponsored by Mr. Isaacman’s company, Shift4 Payments. Contestants used the company’s software to design an online store and then tweeted videos describing their entrepreneurial and space dreams. (Using the software, Dr. Proctor has started selling her space-related artwork, and in her video, she reads a poem that she wrote.)

Dr. Proctor had come close to becoming an astronaut the old-fashioned way. She said that in 2009, she was among 47 finalists whom NASA selected from 3,500 applications. The space agency chose nine new astronauts that year. Dr. Proctor was not one of them.

She applied twice more and was not even among the finalists. When NASA announced last year another round of applications, Dr. Proctor passed.

“I said, ‘No,’ because I just feel like that door has closed,” she said. “But I was really hopeful that in my lifetime, maybe commercial space would be available for me. I never in a million years would have imagined it would come just like that and so quickly.”

She has had practice. In 2013, Dr. Proctor was one of six people who lived for four months in a small building on the side of a Hawaiian volcano, part of a NASA-financed experience to study the isolation and stresses of a long trip to Mars.

Mr. Sembroski said he heard about Mr. Isaacman’s mission, called Inspiration4, from a commercial during this year’s Super Bowl.

“That was just kind of intriguing,” he said. “And so, it’s like, ‘All right, I’ll donate to St. Jude and throw my name in the hat to see what happens.’”

Mr. Sembroski said he thought he donated $50, but he did not win the sweepstakes, which helped raise $13 million for St. Jude. A friend, though, ending up winning — an old college buddy from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. The friend, who remains anonymous, decided not to go to space but, knowing about Mr. Sembroski’s enthusiasm, transferred the prize to him.

Mr. Sembroski learned that he had won the Crew Dragon seat through a video call with Mr. Isaacman and his friend.

“I just said: ‘Wow. Really? Wow. That’s, that’s amazing,’” Mr. Sembroski said.

Mr. Sembroski was “very reserved at first,” Mr. Isaacman said. “He was almost in like a state of shock.”

After the call ended, Mr. Sembroski went upstairs. “I tell my wife, ‘So yeah, I just got off the call and, um, I’m going to ride a rocket.’ And she looked at me. She said, ‘What?’”

He added, “My older daughter said: ‘Really, Dad? That’s really cool.’”

During college, Mr. Sembroski had worked as a counselor at Space Camp, an educational program in Huntsville, Ala., that offers children and families a taste of what life as an astronaut is like. He also volunteered for ProSpace, a nonprofit advocacy group that pushed to open space to more people.

Mr. Sembroski described himself as “that guy behind the scenes, that’s really helping other people accomplish their goals and to take center stage,” and he finds it hard now to be in the spotlight.

“Everybody’s doing that for me this time,” he said. “And that is a completely different and unique experience.”

A couple of days after learning the news, Dr. Proctor and Mr. Sembroski accompanied Mr. Isaacman to Los Angeles to visit the headquarters of SpaceX and undergo health evaluations at the University of California, Los Angeles.

On Tuesday, after the formal announcement at the Kennedy Space Center, the four crew members will head to Philadelphia to be spun around a giant centrifuge, simulating the strong forces they will experience during launch and re-entry into the atmosphere.

Their training at SpaceX in California will be similar to that of NASA astronauts riding SpaceX rockets. At the end of April, Mr. Isaacman also plans to take them for three days of camping on Mount Rainier in Washington.

“This is about mental toughness,” Mr. Isaacman said. “Getting uncomfortable, staying uncomfortable — and how well you perform when you are uncomfortable.”

He said that in the future, he hopes spaceflight becomes more commonplace and turns “into planning a trip to Europe or something.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/science/30spacex-inspiration4.html

[Orionid]

Inspiration4 private crewed mission nears launch
by Jeff Foust — September 10, 2021 Updated 1:20 p.m. Eastern with revised launch date. [SN]


The Inspiration4 crew of (from left) Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux pose with their Crew Dragon spacecraft ahead of their mid-September launch. Credit: Inspiration4

WASHINGTON — SpaceX is gearing up for its first purely commercial human spaceflight, but many details about the mission remain unclear.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch a Crew Dragon spacecraft on the Inspiration4 mission next week. Four people will fly on the mission, announced in February, spending three days in orbit but not docking to the International Space Station.

Source: https://spacenews.com/inspiration4-private-crewed-mission-nears-launch/

[Orionid]

SpaceX rocket rolls out to pad 39A for Inspiration4 launch
September 12, 2021 Stephen Clark [SFN]


Chris Sembroski, Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, and Sian Proctor pose with the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule that will carry them into orbit. Credit: Inspiration4 / John Kraus

SpaceX raised a Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Sunday, kicking off a busy few days before launch of the all-private Inspiration4 crew mission as soon as Wednesday night.

The Falcon 9 launcher rolled out of SpaceX’s hangar at the southern perimeter of pad 39A late Saturday. The rocket rode a transporter up the ramp to the historic seaside launch facility, where a hydraulic lift raised the 215-foot-tall (65-meter) launcher vertical just before 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) Sunday.

The rollout was to be followed by a dress rehearsal Sunday evening with the four private citizens who will ride the Falcon 9 into orbit this week.

Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/09/12/spacex-rocket-rolls-out-to-pad-39a-for-inspiration4-launch/

[Orionid]

Civilian astronauts practice for launch day at Kennedy Space Center
September 13, 2021 Stephen Clark [SFN]


From left to right: Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman, and Hayley Arceneaux aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft Sunday night. Credit: SpaceX

The four civilian fliers who will rocket into orbit this week on the privately-managed Inspiration4 mission took their seats inside a SpaceX crew capsule Sunday night in Florida during a dress rehearsal for launch day.

Hours later, once the crew members cleared the launch pad, SpaceX test-fired the Falcon 9 rocket set to launch the Inspiration4 mission.

Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/09/13/civilian-astronauts-practice-for-launch-day-at-kennedy-space-center/

[JSz]

Dlaczego w jednym wątku są wymieszane teksty o AX-1 i Inspiration4?

[Orionid]

Dlaczego w jednym wątku są wymieszane teksty o AX-1 i Inspiration4?

Dzięki za zwrócenie uwagi.
Pytanie skąd wzięła się nazwa wątku: Artykuły o Axiom-1 (Inspiration4) ?
Czy to tylko skutek mojej pomyłki, która od maja trwała ?

Umieściłem te dwa arty we właściwym wątku: https://www.forum.kosmonauta.net/index.php?topic=4123.msg169310#msg169310

a w ich dotychczasowym miejscu w zamian umieściłem dwa nowe artykuły
 https://www.forum.kosmonauta.net/index.php?topic=4471.msg164683#msg164683

[Orionid]

Commercial spaceflight industry sees Inspiration4 as a pathfinder but not a model
by Jeff Foust — September 15, 2021 [SN]


SpaceX's Benji Reed (left) and the Inspiration4 crew of Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor and Chris Sembroski discuss their upcoming mission at a Sept. 14 briefing. Credit: Inspiration4/John Kraus

KIHEI, Hawaii — 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 necessarily 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.

Source: https://spacenews.com/commercial-spaceflight-industry-sees-inspiration4-as-a-pathfinder-but-not-a-model/

[Orionid]

SpaceX launches Crew Dragon on first private mission
by Jeff Foust — September 15, 2021 [SN]


A Falcon 9 lifts off Sept. 15 carrying a Crew Dragon spacecraft on the Inspiration4 private human spaceflight mission. Credit: Inspiration4/John Kraus

WAILEA, Hawaii — SpaceX successfully launched a Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying four nonprofessional astronauts on its first private crewed mission Sept. 15, a long-awaited milestone in the commercialization of spaceflight.

Source: https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-crew-dragon-on-first-private-mission/

[Orionid]

Four private citizens ride SpaceX rocket into orbit on historic mission
September 16, 2021 Stephen Clark [SN]


A Falcon 9 rocket streaks into orbit Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center, kicking off the Inspiration4 mission. Credit: Michael Cain / Spaceflight Now / Coldlife Photography

With the backing of a billionaire businessman, four private citizens blasted off Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a first-of-its-kind fully commercial three-day spaceflight aboard a SpaceX crew capsule, riding to an altitude higher than any person has flown in two decades.

Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/09/16/four-private-citizens-ride-spacex-rocket-into-orbit-on-historic-mission/

[Orionid]

Inspiration4 mission to conclude with Sept. 18 splashdown
by Jeff Foust — September 17, 2021 [SN]



The crew of Inspiration4 – Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Chris Sembroski and Sian Proctor (left to right) – said they've been busy doing research and enjoying views out the Crew Dragon’s cupola during their time in orbit so far. Credit: SpaceX

WAILEA, Hawaii — SpaceX’s first private Crew Dragon mission is set to end with a splashdown off the Florida coast Sept. 18, three days after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center.

At the end of a live video session with the four-person Inspiration4 mission Sept. 17, SpaceX said they were planning a splashdown at 7:06 p.m. Eastern Sept. 18. The company later said the splashdown would be in the Atlantic Ocean but did not give a more specific location. Airspace restrictions are in place for splashdowns off the coast from Jacksonville, Daytona Beach and Melbourne, Florida.

Source: https://spacenews.com/inspiration4-mission-to-conclude-with-sept-18-splashdown/

[Orionid]

Crew Dragon splashes down to conclude Inspiration4 mission
by Jeff Foust — September 18, 2021. Updated 9:15 p.m. Eastern with comments from post-splashdown briefing. [SN]


The Crew Dragon spacecraft Resilience splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast Sept. 18 at the end of the Inspiration4 mission. Credit: Inspiration4

KIHEI, Hawaii — SpaceX’s first private crewed mission ended with the splashdown of the Crew Dragon spacecraft off the Florida coast Sept. 18.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft Resilience splashed down off the coast from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 7:06 p.m. Eastern. The splashdown took place 50 minutes after the spacecraft started its deorbit burn.

Source: https://spacenews.com/crew-dragon-splashes-down-to-conclude-inspiration4-mission/