[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] SpaceX's first-ever fully private orbital space tourism rocket, launched at 8:02 PM on the 15th (Eastern Time, USA), carried four passengers who had undergone intensive training for six months. Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of the American credit card payment processor Shift4 Payments, purchased all four tickets for about $200 million, and the remaining three seats were awarded through a public application process.
Isaacman, the inviter of this trip and the spacecraft commander, is known as a speed enthusiast boasting over 6,000 flight hours. He has participated in numerous airshows, enjoyed high-speed global flights, and owns the pilot training company Draken International. Having already spent over $200 million on the four tickets, Isaacman is also running a campaign to raise and donate $200 million, including his own $100 million contribution, to a children's cancer specialty hospital through this space tourism mission.
Xian Proctor became the first Black woman astronaut in history. She is an ordinary earth science professor working at a university in Phoenix, Arizona, but she has attempted NASA astronaut tests three times and failed. Haley Arsenault is a survivor who overcame osteosarcoma. She joined this mission because she works as a nurse at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, to which Isaacman pledged $200 million. Her younger brother and brother-in-law work as aerospace engineers.
Chris Sembroski, a former U.S. Air Force pilot, works as a data engineer at Lockheed Martin and was fortunate enough to participate in this space tourism program. He nurtured his dream of space travel by volunteering as a counselor at space camps and for the commercial space company lobbying group ProSpace. He obtained his ticket after a friend who won Isaacman’s donation fundraising and passenger selection campaign passed the opportunity to him.
These four space tourists will stay in space for three days, conducting various scientific experiments such as studying human body changes in zero gravity. The research results are expected to be published later in a repository accessible to the public.
Although private space travel was pioneered by billionaires, the high cost remains an issue. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic tickets were about $250,000, and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin tickets were auctioned off for $28 million.
SpaceX plans to reduce the cost of a single rocket launch to $20 million by 2040 to promote space tourism. However, NASA and other space companies believe that missions like SpaceX’s Inspiration4 are difficult to generalize as regular space travel. The costs are astronomical, and passengers must undergo months of intensive training, making it unsuitable as a tourism product. The space-specialized media SpaceNews reported, "NASA and other space companies preparing for commercial manned space travel may be pioneers for the future regarding SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission, but they do not necessarily see it as their own model."
SpaceX also plans to reduce training periods and ease the burden on tourists, similar to "air travel." Benji Reed, SpaceX’s Senior Director of Manned Spaceflight Programs, said, "In the long term, we are looking for ways to reduce training time required for safety assurance by adopting a model like airline flights," adding, "This is an essential path to achieve the ultimate goal of sending millions of people to space."
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