The Right Stuff Is For Everyone
Becoming an #astronaut is apparently rather boring for @ArceneauxHayley #inspiration4 pic.twitter.com/ga7QB1zduE
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 17, 2021
Becoming an #astronaut is apparently rather boring for @ArceneauxHayley #inspiration4 pic.twitter.com/ga7QB1zduE
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 17, 2021
Haley will get one helluva reception when she returns to St. Jude’s ?
What I’m finding most interesting about the flight is the change in my own mindset. For the entire history of spaceflight, anyone in space was public property. They were pubic employees on government-run flights and everything they said or did belonged to us. (with exceptions, of course)
For the first time, this is not the case. We might get the occasional postcards home, but what they do and how they spend their time is now *their* business, and not ours, just like any private journey to anywhere else.
This flipped mindset may be the most important contribution of Inspiration4.
Yes, …the important point that people are rightfully free!
How this affects the basic disputes over space travel, including the idea that anyone *not* a subordinate to a government is a pirate, will be interesting to watch. As to Miss Haley and her grin becoming a symbol of piracy throughout the Solar System, all *I* have to say is ARRRR, Matey, we’ll go for the greatest!!!
Well, the in-orbit privacy seems a bit at odds with the public promotional lead-up. Seems a little odd to me… I mean if they really wanted to engage the public and spur donations to St. Jude they might have made more out of the in-orbit possibilities. But it’s their money they can do what they want…
I believe they recorded videos with gopro cameras. Presumably, they will continue to share those, for a small donation to the charity.
I suppose they could have raised more money for St. Jude’s Hospital. But it seems they haven’t done too badly so far…just $200M including $50M from some guy whose initials are EM! Of course, there is no limit to who and when more donations can be made.
The one thing that concerned me about the Inspiration4 mission was that there was no provision for rescue in case something went wrong. Dock with the ISS? No! Wrong orbital inclinations, and no docking adapter. At least the successful mission demonstrated the reliability of the Dragon design. Sooner or later, there is going to have to be some rescue capability for these private missions.
Ya… she’s not having any fun at all. 😉
I got a kick out of her contribution to the 10-minute public event that they sent down. Hayley was clearly the best communicator of the lot. I can see her making great use of this experience in the years ahead in motivating kids of all ages who deal with challenging diseases.
Yep… that’s an “upside-down grimace” if ever I saw one! ;-D
All four of those people will now be public speakers, about their experience, and also will have jobs doing other things. Public speaking will take up a good part of their lives, there are lots of people that have been in space but they are mostly unique with their story.
It occurred to me that Musk’s civilian Dragon has the same problem the Shuttle had for most of its existence: no real destination in orbit. One thing SuperHeavy/Starship could do is put a big inflatable space station in orbit, then his civilian crews would have somewhere to go.
It really was more the cost and safety issues that eventually put a limit on Shuttle. It actually had quite a lot to do in LEO, from visiting Mir and ISS, to servicing and retrieving satellites which were sort of a destination in that sense. Maybe not a lot of potential in that at the time, but Shuttle was large enough that it could also serve as its own destination, especially on the Spacelab flights.
Dragon of course has ISS as a destination, and the success of Inspiration4 seems likely to lead to many more of those type of flights. However NASA currently says it will only allow two commercial flights per year to ISS, so yes having a commercial space station as an additional destination such as the one that Axiom is planning will give them even more possibilities.
That’s the purpose of the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program. It’s encouraging private space stations like Axiom, Sierra Space, etc.