Tue 14 September 2021:
Elon Musk will be the latest billionaire to oversee a civilian space launch, which is scheduled for later this week, but he will be unlike his predecessors Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos in several ways.
Musk’s SpaceX announced on Monday a 24-hour delay in the launch window from its initial plans, with liftoff now scheduled for no later than 8:02 p.m. EDT on Wednesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida (0002GMT Sept.16).
Unlike Branson and Bezos’ brief trips into space with their civilian crews this summer, Musk will not be aboard the Crew Dragon capsule that will be launched into space atop the company’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket.
Dragon’s first all-civilian crew https://t.co/bJFjLCilmc pic.twitter.com/BefnuerQa2
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 14, 2021
The four civilian astronauts on board will spend three days in space before they splash down in the Atlantic Ocean. In the Branson and Bezos launches, both flights made brief trips into space before landing back on solid ground.
But the four civilian fliers on the SpaceX mission, dubbed “Inspiration4” will include a billionaire: Jared Isaacman, who is the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments and also an accomplished jet pilot. Isaacman paid an undisclosed amount of money to make the trip.
The mission also includes Hayley Arceneaux, a bone cancer survivor who later worked for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for cancer patients, for which the mission is dedicated.
Also on board will be Chris Sembroski, an Air Force veteran and aerospace data engineer who won his seat in a sweepstakes, and Sian Proctor, a community college educator in the state of Arizona. She got her seat by winning an entrepreneurial contest held by Isaacman. Proctor’s father worked for NASA during the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s.
All four have honorary titles for the mission such as “chief medical officer” and “mission specialist,” although the titles are only ceremonial.
Since being named to the flight in March, the four have been in training.
The project differs from the Branson and Bezos missions in one important way. The SpaceX Crew Dragon will journey considerably further into space than the International Space Station, beyond its orbit.
Musk attacked Bezos’ Blue Origin spacecraft’s inability to travel deeper into space earlier this year, as Bezos challenged SpaceX’s success in a government space travel contract.
Photo Credit: SpaceX Twitter
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