SpaceX launches 4 amateur astronauts in giant leap for space tourism

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has launched a crew of four amateur astronauts into orbit in the company’s first foray into the growing space tourism industry.

It is the first time a spacecraft has orbited the Earth without professional astronauts on board.

The four – two winners of the competition, a healthcare worker and their billionaire sponsor – will spend three days orbiting the globe in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule before landing in the Atlantic this weekend.

The SpaceX launch comes after Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin launched their first commercial flights in July.

The capsule and Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:02 a.m. EDT on Thursday.

‘open the door’

The four crew members aboard SpaceX’s Inspiration4 launch include a billionaire who made his fortune starting a payments processing company as a teenager and a healthcare worker who beat bone cancer as a child.

The mission was designed as a fundraising opportunity for a children’s cancer hospital in Tennessee and is said to have raised nearly $100 million in donations.

During the mission, the Crew Dragon capsule will orbit the Earth at an altitude 160 kilometers higher than that of the International Space Station.

Online payments billionaire Jared Isaacman, who paid for the flight, found upon reaching orbit that few people had been in space — fewer than 600 in 60 years. But he added: “Many are about to follow. The door is opening now and it’s pretty amazing.”

Their automated capsule was already in orbit: it was used for SpaceX’s second astronaut flight for NASA to the space station. The only significant change is the large arched window at the top instead of the usual space station docking mechanisms.

An accomplished pilot, Isaacman persuaded SpaceX to take the Dragon capsule higher than ever. Initially hesitant because of the increased radiation exposure and other risks, SpaceX agreed after a security review.

Who is the crew?

Jared Isaacman, 38, is the billionaire who funded Thursday’s launch. Isaacman reportedly paid around €170 million for all four seats in the Crew Dragon capsule, although he and SpaceX have not confirmed the number.

He earned his money through the payment processor Shift4 Payments, which he founded in 1999 at the age of 16.

Isaacman is also a trained pilot who has flown jets in the Black Diamond civilian aerobatic team and co-founded a private air force of fighter jets for military training called Draken International.

Sian Proctor, 51, is a professor of geosciences and a former NASA astronaut candidate.

Proctor, also a licensed pilot, has completed four Earth-based “analog” astronaut projects involving simulated space activities, including a NASA-funded four-month artificial Mars mission to study feeding strategies for long space flights.

She is only the fourth African American woman to go into space.

Resident Hayley Arcenaux, 29, lost part of her left thigh and knee to bone cancer when she was 10 years old. She was treated at the St. Jude Children’s Research Center in Memphis, Tennessee, the children’s cancer center where she now works.

Arceneaux said she was motivated to take part in space travel to show her young patients “what life after cancer can be like”.

The final crew member is Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer at US defense company Lockheed Martin.

He won his seat in a lottery fundraiser for the St. Jude Cancer Center. However, Sembroski wasn’t the original winner – a friend won a spot at the start but asked Sembroski to take it instead.