Inspiration4 Opens a New Era of Private Space Travel
Inspiration4 Opens a New Era of Private Space Travel
  • Reporter Kim Seo-jin
  • 승인 2021.10.12 05:06
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▲The Inspiration4 crew’s out-of-this-world selfie / Inspiration4 twitter
▲The Inspiration4 crew’s out-of-this-world selfie / Inspiration4 twitter

At 8 P.M. on Sept. 15, SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk, launched Falcon 9 with Crew Dragon at the Kennedy Space Center, with four civilians on board. After orbiting the Earth once every 90 minutes for three days, the Falcon 9 successfully splashed down into the Atlantic Ocean off Florida’s coast on Sept. 18. Commonly known as the Inspiration4 project, the crew was the first private, all-civilian team ever to orbit the Earth without the accompaniment of a professional astronaut.
The Inspiration4 team was led and funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, a 38-year-old chief executive of the e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments Inc. He paid SpaceX an estimated bill of 200 million U.S. dollars for all four seats on the Crew Dragon. Isaacman thus acquired the right to decide the other members who would join him on the unprecedented space trip. Isaacman selected three crew members who exhibited positive characteristics of humanity—Sian Proctor, former NASA astronaut candidate and community college professor, Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant with a prosthesis at St. Jude Children’s Research Center, and Christopher Sembroski, a data engineer—for the Inspiration4 mission.
The Inspiration4 mission was unique in many ways. First of all, it was a historic all-civilian, private mission. Inspiration4 was also distinctive in that it had aims in charity. They sought to raise at least 200 million dollars for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and their high fundraising goal was reached on the landing date, Sept. 18. In addition, Isaacman wanted to make a crew with diverse values. Isaacman’s hopes were realized as he recruited Arceneaux, who is a childhood bone cancer survivor, and Proctor, who became the first African American woman to pilot a spacecraft, to the mission. Lastly, thanks to the Inspiration4 mission, humankind set a record of having 14 people in outer space at the same time, although it only lasted for a brief moment.
A day after safely returning to Earth, Isaacman tweeted, “Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor, Chris Sembroski, and I were so fortunate to have this perspective and we will do all we can to share the experience with the planet,” posting a phenomenal view of the Earth captured from Crew Dragon Resilience’s cupola. In an interview with NBC, the crew mentioned that the Inspiration4 would be the key for further accessibility in space travel. “I think if orbital space flight is just an exclusive domain of a select few countries, I do not know how far we are going to get,” said Isaacman. The team praised SpaceX for attempting to reduce the astronomical costs of space travel, which is currently affordable only by the richest of the rich.
Inspiration4 definitely set a milestone in space tourism. Mission director Todd Ericson joyfully said, “space travel becomes much more accessible to average men and women” at a press conference. According to Ericson, the crew experienced some sickness while adjusting to space which was similar to that of a professional astronaut’s. “That shows that average men and women are not any more or less prone to space adaptation syndrome than NASA astronauts,” he explained. The latest data from Inspiration4 will surely advance the date of the public’s safe space travel. Thanks to the Inspiration4 mission, a new era of more accessible space travel has begun.