WASHINGTON – An entrepreneur bought a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission due to launch later this year, which will include three other people as part of a project that is a mix of charity and commerce.
SpaceX announced on February 1 that Jared Isaacman, founder and chief executive of online payment processing company Shift4 Payments, purchased the mission, scheduled to launch not before the fourth quarter of 2021. Isaacman will be one of 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 his own company and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to identify the other three people who will accompany him on the first “all-civil” orbital space flight.
“The three crew members we are selecting come from everyday life, including a frontline health professional who is committed to helping children fight cancer, someone who visits our mission website and makes a donation and an inspiring entrepreneur building a business, ”he said in a phone call with reporters about the mission. “In thirty days, they will be prepared for a space suit.”
One of the three people will be a health worker in St. Jude who has apparently already been selected. “I know she is looking forward to the release as much as I am,” he said of that individual, whose name he did not reveal.
The second person will be selected from what is effectively a raffle. People buy tickets on the Inspiration4 website, with the money going to St. Jude. Isaacman said he expects the contest to raise at least $ 100 million, plus $ 100 million that he is donating directly to the hospital.
The third person will be selected in a contest affiliated with Shift4 Payments. Participants can open an online store using the company’s platform and submit a video to be evaluated by a “celebrity jury”, with the winner joining the mission team.
The winners will join Isaacman for what he calls a “fairly extensive training plan” both to prepare for the flight and to get to know each other long before spending several days in a small capsule. “I will guarantee the introduction of some very uncomfortable and stressful situations here on Earth long before we go up into space,” he said. “I intend to put four people in a tent that I can attest to being absolutely smaller than the Dragon spacecraft on a mountain when it is snowing and present everyone with some really stressful situations.”
Neither he nor SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said much about the medical requirements for the participants. “I have been through SpaceX’s medical screening process and I can say that the attitude is about how you take someone into space, not how you connect them,” said Isaacman.
“If you can go on a roller coaster ride, you should be fine to go on the Dragon,” said Musk. Official competition rules require people to be at least 18 years old, no more than 1.98 meters, no heavier than 113.4 kg and “physically and psychologically fit for training and space flight”.
The rules also limit the participation of “US people”, as defined in the International Arms Trafficking Regulations, which includes citizens and permanent residents. Musk, however, seemed to think that others could fly. “It is not out of the question that someone who is not an American citizen can fly,” he said when asked about this 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 aired during the February 7 Super Bowl. “What we intend to raise in terms of these funds and the value of very good,” he said of the $ 200 million target, “will certainly far exceed the cost of the mission itself.”
Musk said trade missions like this will contribute to the development of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle. SpaceX has agreements for other Crew Dragon commercial missions with Axiom Space and Space Adventures, with the Axiom Space Ax-1 mission being launched before January 2022.
“We have to fund the Starship program in some way, and this mission will help fund the Starship program,” he said.
The Inspiration4 mission will use the Crew Dragon spacecraft called “Resilience”, which is currently docked at the International Space Station for NASA’s Crew-1 mission. “We will, of course, coordinate this with NASA,” said Musk. “NASA has been very generous and supported”.
NASA offered its support in a tweet. “I am excited to see one of @Commercial_Crew’s original goals come to be with the expansion of new commercial activities beyond ours in the orbit of low Earth,” said Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations and a former crew’s commercial program, referring to the Inspiration4 ad.
Pilot Isaacman, 37, said the flight is the fulfillment of a dream that dates back to his childhood. “I remember, in fact – a very true story – telling my kindergarten teacher that one day I’m going to space,” he recalled.
Musk is also interested in going to space someday. “I will be on a flight one day, but not this day.”