However, with this flight, worthy of the first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, SpaceX firmly takes back this sector of the New space economy, making the flights of the other two billionaires, that of Branson, who has not even reached the threshold of space, do the flights. or 100 km from the ground, and that of the more honest Bezos, who instead exceeded that limit by a little, the figure of the child’s play.
It is in fact quite different to put a capsule with four neophytes on board in orbit for three days around the Earth compared to the demonstration actions of the other two. They will therefore depart on Wednesday – the exact time depends on many factors of the moment – from the famous launch base 39A at Cape Canaveral, from which the Apollo 11 mission, which led to the human conquest of the Moon, departed in the summer of 1969.
All paid for by Jared Issacman, 37-year-old founder and CEO of Shift4, a very popular payment system, with 6 thousand flight hours behind him, but he doesn’t do it just for himself: he certainly hopes to satisfy one of his long-time desires, but the purpose it is above all raising funds for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, USA, with a lottery for the award of a place, which has brought in more than 20 million and other initiatives.
Interesting are the profiles of the other three members of the mission who, despite being civilians, received a minimum of pre-launch training. We find Hayley Arceneaux, 29, who will be the first person to go into space with a prosthesis and who was, as a child, a cancer patient at the hospital for which they want to raise funds. An emblematic passenger then.
Then there is Chris Sembroski, 42, winner of the lottery to raise funds for the hospital and in any case an engineer with a lot of experience in the field. Sian Proctor, 51, is instead the winner of a tender called by Issacman: to participate it was necessary to set up a site to sell and collect with the Shift4 system, and Proctor sells posters and postcards of African art dedicated to space. He will be the first person from the island of Guam, in the Marianas, to fly into space as a mission pilot.