SpaceX Resumes Commercial Spaceflight Project
Exploring Earth via Extreme Orbit Flight... Four Civilians Participate
Commander, Chinese Tycoon Who Mined 7,700 Bitcoins
American space company SpaceX is attempting a mission to fly civilians in a spaceflight capsule over the Earth's polar regions, with a Chinese cryptocurrency mogul participating as the commander.
On the 13th (local time), U.S. economic media CNBC reported, "SpaceX plans to attempt the 6th commercial spaceflight project of the space capsule 'Dragon,' called the 'Fram 2' mission, as early as the end of this year." It is known to be the first mission where astronauts will fly in a polar orbit over the Earth's polar regions to explore the Earth.
Private astronauts participating in SpaceX's 'Crew-2' mission are taking photos. [Image source=SpaceX X (formerly Twitter)]
This mission involves entrepreneur and adventurer Chun Wang from Malta as the commander, along with three civilians from Norway, Australia, and Germany. Among them, Chun Wang's background is unique. He was born in Tianjin, China, and obtained Maltese citizenship last year. He is a cryptocurrency mogul investor. Wang has stated that he mined 7,700 Bitcoins (approximately 614 billion KRW) over two years and is a co-founder of the decentralized organization 'F2 Pool,' which helps generate cryptocurrency. The organization is known to have mined 1.3 million Bitcoins over the past 11 years, currently valued at about 103.7 trillion KRW.
Wang is reported to have personally covered the costs to invite the other three participants on this flight. The current price for SpaceX's commercial civilian flight tickets has not been disclosed. However, NASA previously stated that it pays about 55 million USD (approximately 75 billion KRW) per seat to send astronauts on the Dragon capsule. Based on this, the price for four seats would amount to 220 million USD (approximately 299.5 billion KRW).
During the 3 to 5-day flight, they plan to observe the polar regions through the windows on the roof of the space capsule at an altitude of 425 to 450 km and study phenomena such as aurora-like light emissions. Wang told CNBC, "I paid for this mission," adding, "I have been interested in space since I was very young, and this is the first time a civilian can plan and design a very personal mission." Janicke Mikelsen, a Norwegian filmmaker participating in the flight, said she "could not believe it" when she received the invitation from Wang and added, "I plan to film the entire flight process. I want to create immersive content that goes beyond a simple documentary, allowing the audience to experience as if they were on board the Dragon."
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