SpaceX prepares to send first all-civilian crew into orbit

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: With a view of the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building at left, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soars upward from Launch Complex 39A carrying the company’s Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule and four Crew-2 astronauts towards the International Space Statio

(Refiles to drop redundant word "but" in paragraph 5)

By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) -Yet another billionaire entrepreneur is set to ride into space this week, strapped inside the capsule of a SpaceX rocketship as part of an astro-tourist team poised to make history as the first all-civilian crew launched into Earth orbit.

Jared Isaacman, the American founder and chief executive of e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments, will lead three fellow spaceflight novices on a three-day trip from blastoff at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to splashdown in the Atlantic.

The 38-year-old tech mogul has plunked down an unspecified but presumably exorbitant sum for fellow billionaire and SpaceX owner Elon Musk to fly Isaacman and three specially selected travel mates into orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

The crew vehicle, dubbed Resilience, was set for liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center atop one of Musk's reusable Falcon 9 rockets, with a five-hour targeted launch window that opens at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT) on Wednesday.

Forecasts on Sunday predicted a 70% chance of favorable weather conditions for launch, organizers said, on a flight directed entirely from the ground.

A successful flight could spawn a new era of commercial space tourism, with several firms vying for wealthy customers to pay a small fortune to experience the exhilaration of supersonic travel, weightlessness and the visual spectacle of space.

Setting acceptable levels of consumer risk in the inherently dangerous endeavor of rocket travel is also key, and raises a pointed question.

"Do you have to be both rich and brave to get on these flights right now?" Sridhar Tayur, a professor of operations management and new business models at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, asked in an interview with Reuters on Friday.

The so-called Inspiration4 mission was conceived by Isaacman mainly to raise awareness and support for one of his favorite causes, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a leading pediatric cancer center.

He has pledged $100 million personally to the institute.

BEYOND THE BILLIONAIRE SPACE RACE

SpaceX is easily the most well-established player in the burgeoning constellation of commercial rocket ventures, having already launched numerous cargo payloads and astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.

Rival companies Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin both recently celebrated their debut astro-tourism missions with their respective founding executives, billionaires Richard Branson https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/virgin-galactics-branson-ready-space-launch-aboard-rocket-plane-2021-07-11 and Jeff Bezos https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-blueorigin-idAFKBN2EQ0EP, each going along for the ride.

But those two high-profile flights were suborbital in scale, sending their crews of citizen astronauts to space and back in a matter of minutes.

The SpaceX flight is designed to carry its four passengers where no all-civilian crew has gone before, into Earth orbit.

There, they will circle the globe once every 90 minutes at more than 17,000 mph (27,360 kph), or roughly 22 times the speed of sound. The target altitude is 575 kilometers, or nearly 360 miles, beyond the orbits of the International Space Station or even the Hubble Space Telescope.

Like Blue Origin, the 20-story-tall SpaceX launch vehicle and crew capsule will take off vertically from a launch pad on a flight directed entirely from the ground.

Branson's suborbital rocket plane, by contrast, had two highly trained pilots at the controls as it carried its four rear-seat passengers 50 miles (81 km) high.

The Inspiration4 crew will have no part to play in operating their spacecraft, despite some largely honorary titles, though two, Isaacman and geoscientist Sian Proctor, are licensed pilots.

Isaacman, who is rated to fly commercial and military jets, has assumed the role of mission "commander," while Proctor, 51, once a NASA astronaut candidate herself, has been designated as the mission "pilot."

She was selected to join the team through an online contest run by Shift4 Payments.

Rounding out the crew are "chief medical officer" Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a bone cancer survivor turned St. Jude physicians' assistant, and mission "specialist" Chris Sembroski, 42, a U.S. Air Force veteran and aerospace data engineer.

Sembroski won a seat in a sweepstake that drew 72,000 applicants and has raised more than $100 million in St. Jude donations.

The four crewmates have spent five months making rigorous preparations, including altitude fitness, centrifuge (G-force), microgravity and simulator training, emergency drills, classroom work and medical exams.

SpaceX and the crew planned a full dress-rehearsal of launch-day activities at the Cape on Sunday night, to be followed by a final "static" test firing of the rocket's engines, organizers said.

Inspiration4 officials stress that the mission is more than a joyride.

Once in orbit, the crew will perform medical experiments with "potential applications for human health on Earth and during future spaceflights," the group said in media materials.

Appearing in a promotional clip for a Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) documentary series on the mission, Arceneaux said a big part of her motivation was to kindle hope in her cancer patients.

"I'm getting to show them what life can look like after cancer," she said.