Inspiration4 Might Be Flying Your Neighbors
‘They could be your neighbors’ and they’re going to space. SpaceX gets ready to fly the Inspiration4 crew., Washington Post
“But the Inspiration4 mission is of particular importance because three of the crew members are not wealthy, [Alan] Ladwig said. “They’re not billionaires,” he said. “They are people that could be our neighbors, people you went to school with, people you work with. And for them to get this opportunity is pretty fantastic.”
I only found out that there was offsite media dial-in for the @Inspiration4 media event after it was almost over. This is the question I was going to ask about #Inspiration4 pic.twitter.com/cbZ7SyFWLl
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 14, 2021
There are is good documentary on Netflix on this crew and mission (search for “Countdown: Inspiration 4 Mission to Space”.
They seem like a very competent group of people as well as good people. I’m excited for them.
and everyone might want to consider a donation to St. Jude Hospital.
The structure of this program is so much better than Virgin Galactic’s and Blue Origin’s – in every way – and note, the boss is not milking the PR by jumping the queue and giving himself a ticket.
And quite a variety of missions. AIUI they’ve had 20 people in flight training; Inspiration4, Axiom-1, Space Adventures (to break Gemini 11’s LEO altitude record), the Tom Cruise film crew, and ????*
* which may be Axiom 2, Crew Dragon being signed up for Axiom missions 2-4.
I can’t find any news on the Space Adventures crew. Is that flight really going to be a thing or is it just smoke at this point? It says that it’s flying late 2021 to early 2022, but I would think it would have to have actual crew training going on right now to meet those projected dates.
And a quick glance at the flight schedule shows a very busy flight schedule for Falcons and Falcon Heavy through March with nothing for Space Adventures or Tom Cruise.
NSF’s schedule places it after Axiom-1 in 2022.
Do you have a link? I need to see it and I can’t find it.
Maybe Lord British might fly again to space.
Great question. This crew is definitely getting a lot of exposure which will probably extend into post flight world tour and countless Ted talks. It will be interesting to see how they leverage this into something long term for themselves and possibly the St Jude’s community.
There is good chance that Hayley might be offer a job as the medical officer on the #dearMoon flyby exclusion, IMO.
There isn’t that many civilian spaceflight qualified medic that isn’t attached to some government agency.
Exactly. The Netflix deal is frustrating for us because the detailed coverage will come through that but the profits from that, and perhaps the magazine deal that Hayley has, go to St. Judes. After all of that, there are the less direct results of this flight on the future careers and book deals of these four people.
Isaacson’s jet fighter group for example will now be part of the training cycle of other folks in the Commercial Space sphere. They’ve already made money training Air Force pilots. Shift4 is getting great advertising from this too. He’ll get his money back.
Sembroski and Proctor are all more valuable to their employers after this experience…if they choose to keep working for them.
Arceneaux might keep working for St. Judes because she has a passion for that. She can make her extra money on the side or maybe even just go back to St. Judes after the hype of Inspiration4 has calmed down.
“the boss is not milking the PR by jumping the queue and giving himself a ticket” I hope Mr. Musk stays safe and sound for the next several years. The entire future of US spaceflight is totally dependent on his efforts. I am afraid that if we were to lose him it would set spaceflight back by a century. Musk is the vision, the leadership and makes it happen.
Besides safety I think time is an important aspect right now. Elon is crucial operationally to his various projects, especially right now with Starship which is in a critical phase of development as they work toward their first orbital flights.
Elon is driven by his goals and weighs all decisions logically. I assume he has concluded that for him to take several weeks off to make a Dragon flight would not advance the Starship project, but would instead create an unnecessary distraction and delay.
Compared to Bezos and Branson who I assume are less missed when they are absent (maybe not missed at all?).
plus all the training and team building the crew did over the past 7 months that would impact Elon’s time for Starship, Gigafactories and other related business workload.
Training was what I was referring to when I said that it would take several weeks of his time. I’m not sure that the two non-pilot participants really needed as much training as they got with Inspiration4, I would think some of it was just for them to have as much of the astronaut experience as possible. Along with the team building exercises that you mentioned. I would take a guess that the essential training for a non-pilot participant on an orbit only type of flight could be done in several weeks not several months.
Now if he went to ISS then that would of course be several additional days in space, as well as whatever additional training is required for ISS visitors. However again I think that all of the Axiom participants including the non-pilots seem to be getting as much training as they can as they seem to be trying to maximize the experience. But I would think that there is a minimum training level for visitors to ISS that could be much less than that. But of course it is up to NASA to decide what is required. And some of the training requirements might be refined somewhat after the first few tourist flights have occurred.
Edit – well probably Michael Lopez-Alegria isn’t trying to maximize his astronaut experience in the same way that a space tourist would, but I suspect that he is enjoying being back in it.
I’d go one step further and say that Bezos and Branson are actually more useful inside the spacecraft at that stage of their projects…to shoot some adrenaline into their PR and market shares. That’s not a problem for Dragon, Tesla, Starlink, or Starship because SpaceX and Tesla have already been disrupting their respective markets for years at this point.