Inspiration4: The watershed mission of space exploration is about to launch!
If many times we have said "this is the first flight of space tourists",
then there has always been at least one small or large flaw that made us reconsider:
we do not want to fuel controversy between space companies, but the SpaceX flight currently
scheduled for September 15 has all the numbers to be really a pleasure trip, tourist, in fact.
The Inspiration4 flight will not go to the Space Station (as the first space tourists did, from
Dennis Tito onwards), but it will reach the Earth orbit and it will stay there for about four days,
floating in Space as instead Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin flights did not do: the crew will
be entirely composed by tourists, from pilot to passengers. They will depart from Launch Complex
23 at Kennedy Space Center aboard the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft, launched from a Falcon 9.
But there is more... after two billionaires have launched themselves into space
primarily for their own benefit, a third, Jared Isaacman,
is about to take himself and three other civilians on a space venture
undertaken not only for the love of the unknown but also to raise funds for medical research.
One thing is for sure... The prospect of space travel will be very different
after the launch of Inspiration4. We can in fact say with reasonable
certainty that the date of departure, which at the moment seems confirmed for next September 15,
will be the watershed between two historical eras: the one started with Gagarin when orbital
space was mostly a realm reserved exclusively for nations and to their selected astronauts...
and the one after Inspiration4, when space travel will be definitely within the reach
of private companies and ordinary citizens. It is difficult to say what this transition
will mean: whether space travel and its benefits will be democratized throughout society or
will be exploited exclusively by corporations and the super-rich.
For now, the answer could be a bit of both. The events that led to Inspiration4 were cast
more than two decades ago. As some of you may remember, the private spaceflight market was
opened by Dennis Tito, an American investment manager who in April 2001
paid $20 million to fly aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station,
where he stayed for a week, becoming the world's first space tourist.
Only a little more than a year later, Elon Musk, then a successful software entrepreneur,
would go on to found SpaceX, whose Falcon 9 rocket is now in the process
of taking the crew of Inspiration4 into an orbit even farther than that of the Space Station.
At the time, as SpaceX was about to "take off," figuratively and literally,
Jared Isaacman was still a 20-year-old building the fortune that would eventually allow him
a commander's seat on the first all-civilian SpaceX flight.
How did he get there? Isaacman first contacted SpaceX and other commercial space companies in
2007, telling them he'd be willing to buy tickets aboard a space flight when they became available.
It was a dream that could only materialize in 2020, after SpaceX's rockets had
by then been chosen by NASA to carry its astronauts to the Space Station.
And it was only after the reassuring outcome of those transshipments that Issacman and
Musk began planning Inspiration4, announcing the joint project in February of this year.
The crew, chosen entirely by Isaacman, is made up of women and men who have never experienced
spaceflight. The goal is also unique: to raise money (and Isaacman has already donated
one hundred million) for the research programs of St. Jude Children Research Hospital in Memphis,
whose operating costs are on the order of $2.8 million a day, but
nothing is charged to patients. In the intentions of the crew,
it is, therefore, a flight full of symbols that they have carved out for themselves (Leadership,
Hope, Prosperity, Generosity), designed to spur humanity on to better and better ways.
Jared Isaacman embodies “Leadership”; founder and CEO of Shift4Payment (a digital payments
platform), he will be the commander. Founded his company at age 16, earned his pilot's license at
21, and went on to become a pilot of commercial and military aircraft, collecting several world
records (from air-show performances to circling the world in jets in just under 62 hours).
“Hope” is the story of Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a medical assistant at St. Jude and the medical
officer on board. Born in Louisiana, at the age of 10 she was diagnosed with bone cancer;
successfully treated at St. Jude, she now works at the same hospital. Hayley will now
become the youngest American to reach orbit. For “Prosperity” there is Sian Proctor, pilot
of the mission: born in Hagåtña (island of Guam, USA), geoscientist, explorer, and specialist in
scientific communication in Phoenix. In the field for the “Generosity”
will be Christopher Sembroski in the role of mission specialist:
engineer and veteran of the U.S. Air Force, consultant for Space Camp (a program to bring
children and teens closer to Space and science), he works as an engineer at Lockheed Martin.
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In addition to announcing the crew, Isaacman and SpaceX also outlined mission details. The launch
is scheduled for September 15 at the earliest. The spacecraft will be in the air for three full days,
flying in an orbit that will have the same inclination as
that of the International Space Station (51.6°) but as high as 540 kilometers,
an altitude about 100 kilometers higher than that of the Space station.
This particular orbit, Isaacman said, will be the highest reached by a human crew since the
last Space Shuttle mission carried out in 2009 during maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope.
The decision on mission length represents a balance between the capabilities of the Dragon
spacecraft and the length of time the four members will have to spend in a relatively small space.
For the Falcon 9, it will be the third flight, while Resilience, officially Crew Dragon C207,
although modified, is that of SpaceX Crew-1, the first operational mission that brought NASA
and JAXA astronauts to the Space Station in November 2020. Notably, the docking system to the
Space station has been removed and in its place is a giant dome that will provide the crew with an
unprecedented 360-degree view of Earth - it is the largest "window" ever taken into space to date.
To make the dome was not used glass but a special ceramic called aluminum oxynitride or ALON. This
allows to have high transparency in the visible (but also in the near UV and near-infrared),
is extremely hard, and scratch-resistant. At the moment no precise technical information
about the structure of the transparent dome of Inspiration4 has been released.
From what we can see in the images will be used a double structure to ensure greater strength.
There is also to consider that during launch and re-entry (and in part of the orbital flight)
the transparent dome will be protected by the cover of the spacecraft itself. During the tests,
it was also tried to make two people stay simultaneously, with a positive result.
The flight will not exceed 5 days, the maximum time for which the spacecraft was built before
having to dock for supplies. It has not yet been declared what will be done on board, but it will
probably be a nice tourist flight, with very few tasks to perform except to enjoy the view of Earth
and Space from a privileged position. The crew underwent a relatively short,
but very intense training session. Isaacman and Proctor learned how to control the spacecraft
in the unlikely event that they are required to take control of it during the flight - which is
expected to be totally controlled from the ground. During training, the four would-be
astronaut tourists familiarized themselves with the spacecraft and its emergency systems, studied
the launch operations of previous missions, and the ditching phases. Then, the crew undertook
zero-gravity flight training to familiarize themselves with the sensation of weightlessness
and the immediate effects on the body. In mid-July, they donned SpaceX spacesuits
for the first time, and on Aug. 9 and 10, they trained on decommissioned military jets to
familiarize themselves with the gravitational forces they will be subjected to at launch.
But how do you fly, as a "tourist," in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft? Well, you climb aboard,
strap yourself in, close the hatch and wait for the engine to fire up and start pushing
you up. Nothing else... The Dragon takes care of everything, so you can relax and enjoy the
ride - unless, of course, something goes wrong, and in space, something can always go wrong...
And that will still force you to spend 60-hour hours a week in classrooms and simulators for
several months; to master hundreds of pages of technical specifications and procedures;
to learn the workings of dozens of onboard systems and subsystems,
and to train for emergencies. The biggest risk aboard Dragon is a fire caused by a battery
overheating, and there are a lot of batteries aboard the ship, not only the spacecraft’s own,
but those that power the tablets, cameras, and smartphones the crew members will carry.
There is also the risk of a spacecraft depressurization, requiring the crew to
look for the breach, try to seal it off, and scramble into their suits at the same
time. A launch emergency may occur even if, for example, the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket
that carries the ship to space fails to separate from the Dragon and the commander has to manually
execute the separation maneuver. The Dragon’s guidance system is also subject to failure,
potentially causing the ship’s solar panels to slip out of alignment with the sun and
requiring human intervention to set things right. .Fortunately, practicing for these eventualities
aboard a Dragon requires a whole new kind of training, because in any case, it's 2021 and
not the 1960s, when Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules were designed with the cockpit of an
airplane in mind. You know. The sheet metal instrument panels were studded with hundreds
of switches, dials, lights, and analog gauges. On-board computers were controlled by a mechanical
keyboard. The captain flew those ships the same way you fly an airplane: with a stick that
determined speed, attitude, altitude, and heading. Dragon's designers replaced everything,
including the stick, with three large touchscreens in front of four side-by-side seats. Each screen
can call up to 10 sets of displays, allowing the crew to focus on a particular set of systems:
guidance, environmental, electrical, and more. Ideally, the spacecraft helps the astronauts
so much that they have virtually nothing to do, with the ship operating completely autonomously.
And if automation fails to buffer an emergency, then SpaceX ground controllers take over, who can
troubleshoot and issue commands to the spacecraft from the Mission Control room. Only if the Dragon
can't take care of itself and the ground crew can't fix the problem will astronauts take over.
In this regard, Jared Isaacman stated that he feels absolutely comfortable. He wrote: "I don’t
know that there’s ever been a human spaceflight mission that did not have some anomaly. People
are telling us we’re making good progress. I think we’ve definitely arrived at the point where we’re
ready and this is going to be a well-executed mission. I have never seen a more innovative
and impressive organization than SpaceX. It only took Elon Musk stuff six months to go from initial
idea to actual mission accomplishment. Elon and his people are turning science fiction into
reality every day and Inspiration4 is proud to be a very small part of the story they are making."
That's all for now. On Sept. 3rd, teams from SpaceX and the Inspiration4 mission
met at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, to conduct a Flight Readiness
Review of Resilience, the Falcon 9 rocket that will launch it to orbit, the ground systems,
recovery assets, the results of the astronaut training, and other key mission elements.
After concluding that everything was good to go, a launch date was set for Wednesday, Sept. 15th,
with a backup launch date for Thursday, Sept. 16th.
Currently, both launches are scheduled to lift off by 12:00 AM UT (05:00 PM PDT; 08:00 PM EDT).
The crew members are scheduled to arrive in Florida on Thursday, Sept. 9th,
to commence final preparations for their mission. Approximately three days before liftoff, SpaceX
will narrow down the launch window to five hours based upon weather conditions at the launch site,
along the ascent corridor, and at landing locations off the coasts of Florida
for a safe return of the crew and splashdown a few days later near the coast of Florida.
Have a great trip Inspiration4, and good luck!