A billionaire, physician, college professor and former Air Force missileman are set to participate in the first all-civilian trip to space when they board a SpaceX rocket Wednesday and launch into orbit.
The mission, called Inspiration4, was purchased by billionaire Jared Isaacman, 38, who is the founder of Shift4 Payments.
Isaacman announced the big purchase in February, along with news that he would be giving seats away to three random people.
He will not reveal the exact cost of the trip but has said it was less than $200 million.
‘We have really tried to make it accessible to everyone,’ Isaacman told DailyMail.com in an interview earlier this year
‘Everyday people are able to join the mission, whereas only super powers have sent people into outer space.’
The complete crew was revealed in March, which includes Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a physician assistant at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and cancer survivor, Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator in Tempe, Arizona and Chris Sembroski, 41, a former Air Force missileman from Everett, Washington.
Lift-off is scheduled for Wednesday, September 15 at 8pm ET from launch pad 39A, at NASA’s Kennedy Center in Florida.
The crew will then spend three days at an orbit of 360 miles above Earth, which is farther than the International Space Station (ISS).
There, they will circle the globe once every 90 minutes at more than 17,000 miles per hour, or roughly 22 times the speed of sound.
The ‘Inspiration4’ mission caps a summer that saw billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos cross the final frontier, on Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin spaceships respectively, a few days apart in July.
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A billionaire, physician, college professor and former Air Force missileman are set to participate in the first all-civilian trip to space when they board a SpaceX rocket Wednesday and launch into orbit
Issacman grew up in New Jersey and started dabbling in computer technical support and repair when he was just 14 years old.
Two years later, he was offered a full time position and dropped out of high school to take the job – he later earned a GED.
In 2005, Issacman founded a retail payment processing company named United Bank Card, which was later renamed Harbortouch, a point-of-sale payment company based in Pennsylvania.
He was the founding CEO and retained that role in 2015 with the company having ‘been profitable for over a decade.
The mission, called Inspiration4, was purchased by billionaire Jared Isaacman, 38, who is the founder of Shift4 Payments. Issacman grew up in New Jersey and started dabbling in computer technical support and repair when he was just 14 years old
Issacman will pilot the craft and serve as spacecraft commander
By 2020, the company had been renamed Shift4 Payments, Isaacman became the CEO, and the company was processing $200 billion in payments annually.
Issacman will pilot the craft and serve as spacecraft commander.
Arceneaux, who is from Tennessee, was the first winner of a seat aboard the craft, who will become the youngest American in space and the first to make the journey with a prosthesis.
At the age of 10, Arceneaux was treated for bone cancer and had surgery at St. Jude to replace her knee and get a titanium rod in her left thigh bone.
Hayley Arceneaux, 29, who is from Tennessee, was the first winner of a seat aboard the craft, who will become the youngest American in space and the first to make the journey with a prosthesis
At the age of 10, Arceneaux was treated for bone cancer and had surgery at St. Jude to replace her knee and get a titanium rod in her left thigh bone
‘My battle with cancer really prepared me for space travel,’ Arceneaux said in a February interview with The Associated Press.
‘It made me tough, and then also I think it really taught me to expect the unexpected and go along for the ride.’
She wants to show her young patients and other cancer survivors that ‘the sky is not even the limit anymore.’
Proctor was revealed as a winner this past March.
She is an entrepreneur, educator, trained pilot and active voice in the space exploration community.
She was selected as the top entrant of an independently judged online business competition that attracted approximately 200 entries and was conducted by the eCommerce platform Shift4Shop.
Sian Proctor, 51, is an entrepreneur, educator, trained pilot and active voice in the space exploration community
She was selected as the top entrant of an independently judged online business competition that attracted approximately 200 entries and was conducted by the eCommerce platform Shift4Shop
And an independent panel of judges chose her space art website dubbed Space2inspire.
‘It was like when Harry Potter found out he was a wizard, a little bit of shock and awe,’ Proctor said last week. ‘It’s like, ‘I’m the winner?’
Proctor, who studied geology, applied three times to NASA’s astronaut corps, coming close in 2009, and took part in simulated Mars missions in Hawaii.
She was born in Guam, where her late father worked at Nasa’s tracking station for the Apollo moonshots, including Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s.
She plans to teach from space and create art up there too.
‘To me, everything that I’ve done… has brought me to this moment.’
The last seat was awarded to Sembroski, who donated and entered the lottery but was not picked in the random drawing earlier this month — his friend was.
The last seat was awarded to Chris Sembroski, who donated and entered the lottery but was not picked in the random drawing earlier this month — his friend was. His friend declined to fly for personal reasons and offered the spot to Sembroski
Sembroski is a former US Air Force missileman
His friend declined to fly for personal reasons and offered the spot to Sembroski, who worked as a Space Camp counsellor in college and volunteered for space advocacy groups.
‘Just finding out that I’m going to space was an incredible, strange, surreal event,’ he said in March.
Sembroski will serve as the Mission Specialist and will help manage payload, science experiments, communications to mission control and more.
The crew’s training has lasted months and has included experiencing high G force on a centrifuge—a giant arm that rotates rapidly.
Pictured is the redesigned SpaceX Dragon Crew capsule, which now features a glass dome at the top for the crew to look out at space
The crew’s training has lasted months and has included experiencing high G force on a centrifuge—a giant arm that rotates rapidly
Over the three days of orbit, their sleep, heart rate, blood and cognitive abilities will be analyzed. Tests will be carried out before and after the flight to study the effect of the trip on their body
They have also gone on parabolic flights to experience weightlessness for a few seconds and completed a high altitude, snowy trek on Mount Rainier in the northwestern US.
Over the three days of orbit, their sleep, heart rate, blood and cognitive abilities will be analyzed.
Tests will be carried out before and after the flight to study the effect of the trip on their body.
The idea is to accumulate data for future missions with private passengers.
The stated goal of the mission is to make space accessible for more people, although space travel remains for the moment only partially open to a privileged few.
‘In all of human history, fewer than 600 humans have reached space,’ said Isaacman.
‘We are proud that our flight will help influence all those who will travel after us.’