The crew of the Inspiration 4 mission will orbit the earth for 3 days, hoping to raise 200 million US dollars for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
September 15, 2021, NASA Kennedy Space Center , night falls, SpaceX 's 2 rocket launches inspiration from the launch of the spacefalcon 9 Task. Photographs: MICHAEL SEELEY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Written by: NADIA DRAKE
Just after 8pm US Eastern Time, SpaceX’s manned dragon spacecraft launched into orbit at NASA Kennedy Space Center This is the first fully private manned mission of mankind.
The four crew members of the Inspiration 4 mission are not professional astronauts and have no previous space experience. Three of them only learned that they would visit space earlier this year. Because of this unexpected news, they embarked on a training road and became the focus of the media.
The crew of Inspiration 4 is undergoing zero-gravity flight training. From left to right, Hayley Arceneaux, Chris Sembroski, Jared Isaacman and Sian Proctor. Photograph: JOHN KRAUS, INSPIRATION4
Now, the crew of Inspiration 4 is orbiting the earth,They will experience weightlessness for three days, and at the same time do some scientific research to help St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital raise 200 million US dollars. The crew members took the Dragon spacecraft "Toughness". The flight was fully automated. Passengers with little flying experience could also board the spacecraft and enjoy the journey.
Previously, Tenacity sent four NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, but this time, instead of docking with the space station, it flew to an altitude of about 580 kilometers, which is 130 kilometers above the highest point of the International Space Station. Meter. The crew will stare at the earth through a special glass dome, which SpaceX recently installed at the location of the spacecraft’s interface. If all goes well, Tenacity will return to the surface later this week and land on the Florida coast.
This is the first time a manned orbital flight has not visited the space station since 2009. In 2009, the space shuttle Atlantis sent the astronauts to the Hubble Space Telescope for final restoration.
"This is interesting because this is a commercial spacecraft performing a commercial mission. It has no destination, and none of the participants is, and has never been a government astronaut," the founder of BryceTech , Industry analyst Carissa Christensen said: "This is a new phenomenon."
Inspiration 4 mission commander Jared Isaacman crossed the crowd to prepare for the flight. Photo: MICHAEL SEELEY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Inspiration 4 pilot Sian Proctor waved to the crowd as he was about to drive to the locker room near the launch pad.
Photograph: JOE RAEDLE, GETTY IMAGES
Proponents of Inspiration 4 say that this mission marks a new era of human space flight: the door to space opens to "normal" pilots. The Netflix platform is broadcasting a documentary about the mission; the crew is on the cover of the "New Space Age" special issue of Time magazine; the news website Axios has produced multiple podcasts to tell the behind-the-scenes stories of the mission; multiple companies Use inspiration 4 to promote products. There is a message behind these: this flight paved the way for others to go to space-but is this really the case?
Some experts in the aerospace industry said that the barriers to entry into space flight are as high as before, but the gatekeepers are changing, and the criteria for selecting pilots are also changing. As space becomes more and more commercialized, personal wealth plays a greater role in determining who can fly to space.
The commander of the Inspiration 4 mission is billionaire Jared Isaacman, who has contracted SpaceX’s spacecraft. The specific amount has not been announced. Also on board were Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude’s Hospital and childhood cancer survivor, who was the first person to enter space with a prosthetic limb; Air Force veteran Chris Sembroski, whose seat was selected by lottery; and an online competition. Winner Sian Proctor, she almost became a member of the 2009 NASA astronaut class.
"This puts a lot of things in the hands of billionaires and millionaires, who can fly into space by spacecraft or give up seats on charter flights," the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Space History Homemaker Matt Shindell said: "I think what happens next is the real test."At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center’s historic launch pad 39A, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was launched with the "Tough" manned dragon spacecraft. Photo: MICHAEL SEELEY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
New tickets for space
The commander of this mission is 38-year-old Isaacman, who is keen on adventure. In 2005, he founded the payment processing company Shift4 Payments, which now has annual retail sales of more than $200 billion. He is also an excellent pilot and co-founder of Draken International. This company is responsible for training military pilots and operates the largest private fighter fleet in the world.
In October last year, Isaacman contracted SpaceX’s four-person spacecraft, preparing for orbital flight. He told Axios that it only cost less than $200 million. Then, he announced that this mission was also a fundraiser for St. Jude’s Hospital. He would not ride with relatives and friends, but randomly choose the other three seats.
Isaacman named the three open seats "Hope", "Generosity" and "Prosperity", appointed himself as a leader, and added the title of mission commander.
In January this year, the staff of St. Jude’s Hospital chose Arceneaux to sit on the "hope" seat. She was diagnosed with bone cancer when she was 10 years old. After surgery, she replaced her left knee and implanted a titanium rod in the damaged femur. Now she is the medical officer for this task.
Sembroski is a data engineer at Lockheed Martin (Lockheed Martin),Get a "generous" seat, which is basically chosen at random. After Sembroski learned of this task from the advertisement of the Super Bowl , he donated to St. Judas and entered the lottery list. It was not him who won the prize, but his friend, but the place was given to him.
Proctor participated in a competition. The requirement was to open a Shift4 store and shoot a short video (the more people watched, the better), describing the reason for wanting to go to space. In this way, she won the last seat, "Prosperity".
As the crew demonstrated this time, the concept of "astronauts" is changing rapidly, said Jordan Bimm, a science historian at the University of Chicago . Looking back in history, the space agency initially recruited military pilots, and later joined scientists and other experts. Now, the wealthy elite can buy space travel seats for themselves and select candidates according to the way they see fit.
Inspired by the medical officer Hayley Arceneaux of Mission 4, riding a multi-axis trainer, it can help the rider experience the feeling of rolling in space. Photograph: JOHN KRAUS, INSPIRATION4
is ready
Normally, NASA also carefully selects crew members, mission managers are committed to building a cohesive team, so that the probability of successful completion of the mission Highest. Then, these members will train together for many years.
Inspiration 4 mission is not the case, from Isaacman’s first conversation with SpaceX,It takes less than a year to select personnel and then launch the mission. In about 6 months, these people received rigorous training, including 30 hours of simulated flight and sufficient training for the automated dragon spacecraft, so as to control the spacecraft and hope to survive the unfortunate accident. The crew also completed centrifugal training, simulated launch and landing gravity, participated in zero-gravity flight exercises, piloted the jet fighter , and hiked to the alpine camp on Mount Rainier.
In automatic flight, why do crew members need to conduct such training, especially jet fighter formation flying? When asked about this question, Isaacman wrote on Twitter, (in order to) “keep focus, manage crew resources, and deal with dynamic environments” and “the photos look cool”.
Although space flight is often described as a fascinating thing, and the photos of Inspiration 4 crew members are no exception, the experience is not fascinating at all, although it cost millions of dollars. In fact, space travel involves suffering, sacrifice, and survival. Shindel said he is curious how the crew will cope with the rapid entry into orbit and spend three days together at a very close distance.
"Once you enter the space capsule and start the mission, you will experience all the gravity, loneliness, intimacy with other crew members, and the fear of returning to the atmosphere. You will pray along the way," Shindell said.
There are also various items in the space capsule, including scientific experiment items to study how humans can adapt to space flight from both mental and physical aspects, personal souvenirs, and items to be auctioned, and the money received Will be donated to St. Jude’s Hospital. In addition, the spacecraft also carried 30 kilograms of Sichu and mosaic hops. Mission representatives said that these hops "will be used to brew a kind of outer space beer."
Inspiration 4 crew member Chris Sembroski sits in a flight simulator at the Huntsville Space Camp in Alabama.Photograph: JOHN KRAUS, INSPIRATION4
"New Space"
This is the third time a private tourist has entered space this year. In July, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin completed the launches respectively, but they were all suborbital drives, and the weightlessness was only a few minutes.
But this flight is not the first time that the customer has been put into orbit. Since 2001, ordinary citizens can also fly to the International Space Station, and some people have paid up to 52 million U.S. dollars for this. Soon, more paying passengers will take SpaceX’s capsule and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the orbital space laboratory.
Considering the expansion of commercial flights, it is easy to understand why some people in the aerospace industry are discussing the beginning of a new era. But others warned that it would be a mistake to treat these crew members as "ordinary people" or representatives of all mankind. There are only 2,755 billionaires in the world, and Isaacman is one of them. Those who can afford the spaceship account for only a very small part of the total population.
Even the selection process of other crew members is based on strict criteria, or simply by luck. Sembroski is the lucky one among the 72,000 lottery winners, and the probability of passing NASA astronaut selection is higher than this. Although the crew of Inspiration 4 is more diverse than many other missions, the following private orbit missions are mainly undertaken by men, continuing the tradition of the past, that is, the proportion of female astronauts is about 11%. There are fewer astronauts of color. (Proctor is the fourth black American woman to enter Earth orbit.)
Bimm said that space flight is a scarce experience, largely in the hands of the privileged. We will know soon,Do these flights herald a new chapter in the exploration of the universe?
"The evidence is in the pattern," Bimm said, "I want to say to everyone who is interested in space: don't pay too much attention to this mission. Look at the next mission, next time, and next time."
Before private space flight actually starts, an accident may kill this new industry. If we have learned anything from human spaceflight in 60 years, it is that rockets are dangerous and accidents cannot be avoided.
But the same is true for many adventure sports, people are still waiting in line for the opportunity to summit Mount Everest; it can be said that this is more dangerous than flying to earth orbit.
"Once these risks become obvious, how much are we willing to bear?" Shindell asked: "The question is not whether the accident will happen, but when it happens, and what will happen to the new ecosystem of commercial space flight Impact.”
On September 15, 2021, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket crossed the sky and put the Inspiration 4 mission into orbit. Photograph: MICHAEL SEELEY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Even if everyone can finally enter space, we still don't know what benefits will be brought to mankind if thousands of people float in orbit briefly. Settling on the moon or Mars is very different from hovering over the earth for a few days. Although many space travelers said that after returning, they re-recognized the fragility of the earth and promised to improve the earth’s environment, critics said that sending crews into space is not the most effective way to change the ground conditions.
"In the final analysis, what is the value of sending more people into space?" Shindell said, "I think we should start a cultural dialogue on this.Discuss what we really want to build.
Even so, Bimm of the University of Chicago said that in the Inspiration 4 mission, "someone went to space. It's very inspiring. I hope they can have a great time and return safely." "
(Translator: Sky4)
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