Daily Archives: August 16, 2021

Companies including Elon Musks SpaceX, Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezoss Blue Origin, and Space Adventures aim to make space tourism more common. People are already buying tickets. Some are calling this collection of competing companies the billionaire space race.

On July 5, Virgin Galactic took Richard Branson roughly 86 km up into space. Shortly after, on July 20, Blue Origin flew Bezos into space.

Branson said shortly after his flight:

Were here to make space more accessible to all. Welcome to the dawn of a new space age.

Bezos said in an announcement on Instagram before the trip:

Ever since I was five years old, Ive dreamed of traveling to space.

Meanwhile, Musks ambitions for space travel revolve around making humans an interplanetary species. The point is to preserve humankind for millions of years to come in case Earth is destroyed with a colony on Mars and eventually beyond.

However, widespread rocket launches come with a considerable cost to the environment.

Associate professor Eloise Marais, who teaches physical geography at University College London, told The Guardian:

For one long-haul plane flight, its one to three tons of carbon dioxide [per passenger]. One rocket launch, in contrast, produces about 200-300 tons for a flight of around four passengers.

Furthermore, the emissions are emitted into the upper atmosphere and remain there for two to three years.

Marais said:

Even water injected into the upper atmosphere where it can form clouds can have warming impacts. Even something as seemingly innocuous as water can have an effect.

Meanwhile, the fuels emit massive amounts of heat at ground level, potentially adding ozone to the troposphere where it retains heat like a greenhouse gas. Plus, fuels like kerosene and methane also produce soot and other harmful gases in addition to carbon dioxide, which can end up harming the ozone layer.

Last year, Jessica Dallas, a New Zealand Space Agency senior policy adviser, wrote in an analysis of research on space launch emissions:

While several environmental impacts are resulting from the launch of space vehicles, the depletion of stratospheric ozone is the most studied and most immediately concerning.

As you can imagine, rockets burn an obscene amount of fuel to make it out of the Earths atmosphere and escape gravity. Thats a heavy price to pay for billionaires to experience a few fleeting minutes of weightlessness.

Many people are outraged at the idea of people like Branson and Bezos getting to spend a handful of luxurious minutes falling weightlessly back down to Earth with their friends and family. Yet, at the same time, back on Earth, wildfires rage on, residents nail shutters on their windows in preparation for another turbulent hurricane season, and doctors intubated COVID-19 patients. These people argue that the billionaires are primarily responsible for the climate crisis and should be using their considerable resources to fight Earths accelerating environmental problems instead of taking day trips into space.

Robert Reich, the former US Labor Secretary, recently tweeted:

Is anyone else alarmed that billionaires are having their private space race while record-breaking heatwaves are sparking a fire-breathing dragon of clouds and cooking sea creatures to death in their shells?

Its no surprise to hear that humanity faces an uphill battle to ensure the survival of future generations on this planet. 2021 has already seen the highest temperatures ever recorded in some places, with brutal climate change-linked heatwaves causing hundreds of preventable deaths.

Fortunately, rocket launches are still relatively low on the global-scale polluter list. For example, NASA said only 114 rockets attempted to reach orbit in 2020, compared to 100,000 planes taking off, on average, per day. But soon enough, space tourism will hit its stride, with costs of space launches dropping year after year.

Marais urges caution as the space tourism industry grows. She says there are currently no international rules regarding the kinds of fuels used and their impact on the environment.She said:

We have no regulations currently around rocket emissions. The time to act is now while the billionaires are still buying their tickets.

Still, Musk argues against the view that billionaires are wasting their time and money trying to explore space while failing to fix Earths many problems.

He tweeted:

Those who attack space maybe they dont realize that space represents hope for so many people.

Various existential risks threaten to decimate humanity and the earthly biosphere. These threats have compelled many brilliant people, like Musk, to consider how best to avoid the potential catastrophes and complete antihalation of our species. They want to ensure that our evolutionary branch will persist and space travel is part of the answer. Thus, its a necessary feat to colonize Mars as a backup planet.

In an interview with Aeon, Musk said the following of his Mars colonization plans:

I think there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary, for safeguarding the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen, in which case being poor or having a disease would be irrelevant because humanity would be extinct. It would be like, Good news, the problems of poverty and disease have been solved, but the bad news is there arent any humans left.

Not everyone loves humanity. Some people seem to think that humans are a blight on the Earths surface, either explicitly or implicitly. They say things like, Nature is so wonderful; things are always better in the countryside where there are no people around. They imply that humanity and civilization are less good than their absence. But Im not in that school. I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness, to make sure it continues into the future.

Another advocate is software engineer, inventor, and global resilience guru Vinay Gupta. In an interview with Vice, Gupta said:

Making life interplanetary, and then interstellar enables creation to generate untold wonders over potentially trillions of years. We have no idea how long human life could last if we can get it off this one fragile, risk-filled, tiny sphere into the ocean of darkness and light above our heads and every nook and cranny of the observable sphere. We owe all the potential futures that could emerge from our present the possibility of existence, and to accomplish this, we must go not only into space but eventually, by any means found necessary, into the stars.

Backing up these genius minds, a fascinating Futurism article reads:

For all we know at this time, Earth has given rise to the most sophisticated life-forms in the universe. Our present body of scientific evidence suggests that there is no more promising branch of evolution than our own. If allowed to continue, our earthly branch will almost certainly give rise to multiferous untold wondersinconceivably complex expressions of human and post-human life and technology. Moreover, if it persists, our branch of evolution may well result in intergalactic civilizations of superintelligent beings, which we cannot presently fathom.

And so the thesis goes as follows: If we think there is a value (to the cosmos) in allowing our branch of evolution to continue to blossom and complexify in whatever ways it may, then we need to make damn sure not to sever this branch of evolution prematurely.

The speaker argued that our present historical moment is a crucial juncture in the unfolding story of the universe because we now have the power to end all life on Earth.

We possess thousands of nuclear warheads capable of occasioning an existential catastrophe, and we are at the liberty of a fairly fragile global ecosystem with limited resources. Beyond that, our being confined to this single planet means that a single asteroid collision or some other unforeseen cataclysmic event could wipe out our entire species and potentially all intelligent life on Earth.

But, bringing this story back to the topic of climate change: A single SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket burns approximately 400 metric tons of kerosene, emitting more greenhouse gas emissions in a few minutes than an average car would in over 200 years! So, does space really represent hope for people like Musk argues?

As Marianne Williamson, failed presidential candidate and new age guru, put it in her reply to Musks Twitter post:

The problem is that Earth represents hopelessness for so many more.

Its a controversial topic for sure. Especially since people are dying from climate change-induced heat and disasters now, but the Mars salvation plan might not even be fully realized in our lifetime.

More here:

Space Travel To Save The Human Species Could Destroy The Planet - Intelligent Living

With Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson both flying to space in craft made by their own private companies, July 2021 was perhaps the highest-profile month for space in years. But these events have been met with a mix of opinion.

I am an associate professor of public relations and study how opinions on topics like politics, entertainment and even space launches vary between different groups of people. I worked with colleagues at The Harris Poll to find out what U.S. residents think of these launches and the broader topic of private spaceflight.

The poll found that most U.S. residents are interested in and have a positive attitude toward the private space industry. One outlier was younger people, who are less hopeful about the benefits of galactic journeys. Overall though and rather interestingly these positive feelings are widely held across political and demographic lines. Its rare to see such agreement on any issue these days, so the results suggest space may be a unifying topic in future years.

Good for everyone but best for the rich

A total of 2,011 U.S. residents responded to the survey questions between July 23 and July 25, 2021, just a couple weeks after Branson and Bezos went to space. The survey asked people to agree or disagree with a number of statements about the potential value of these launches, the motivation behind the launches and who will have access to space. In response to every question, people were supportive of space travel and the technological developments that come from it. Yet, respondents also viewed these events as ego trips generally limited to rich people.

To understand whether people think these endeavors are important, one statement was: Space travel and research are important for the future development of humanity. Seventy-four percent of respondents agreed, with similar results across all political parties. Similarly, over twothirds of people agreed with the idea The recent space launches by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are important for the future development of space travel and technology.

Despite this support, results also reflected recent chatter about space being the playground of the super-rich. In response to the statement The launches make me believe that one day soon ordinary people will be able to go to space, 58% of people agreed. Yet about 80% felt The launches make me believe that only rich people will be able to go to space anytime soon, as well as agreed with the statement The recent space launches by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic were billionaire ego trips.

Finally, about 3 in 4 felt Money spent on space could better be spent addressing todays issues on Earth, though partisan divides were a bit higher here.

According to Rob Jekielek, managing director at The Harris Poll, Space travel has captured our imagination about the future of humanity, but people are concerned about taking resources away from addressing todays pressing challenges. This feeling was mirrored across most demographics and political parties a rare thing in an age when partisanship on most issues is quite high.

Generational differences and scientific beliefs

While the survey found a lot of agreement across partisan lines, there were higher levels of disagreement between age groups young people in particular stood out.

Respondents 18 to 24 years old were less supportive when it came to believing that spending money on space or on Earth would have as much of a positive effect.

Of the youngest group, 59% said space travel is important for humanity, and only 63% thought the money could be better spent on Earth. Meanwhile, 78% of people aged 41 to 56 thought space travel is important for humanity, and 80% think money spent on space travel could be better spent on Earth. Young peoples lower trust in the ability of money to solve problems compared to older groups is not new, though. Younger Americans tend to have less faith in political systems in general.

Another demographic difference of note was between those willing to get a COVID-19 vaccine versus those who were not. Of people interested in vaccines, 79% think space travel is important versus 60% of those opposed to vaccines. While both groups still agree that space travel is important, the gap was one of the largest in the sample. I believe this could reflect differing views on science in general.

Despite the mix of headlines and tweets alternatively bashing or praising Bezos, Branson and Elon Musk, this survey shows that, for now, U.S. residents are generally in agreement that space is still an exciting frontier. The future of space includes satellite internet, missions to Mars and space tourism, but it also involves high costs, the problems of space junk and climate concerns.

It will be interesting to see if this broad support continues or if partisanship and the less optimistic views of the younger generations take hold.

Joseph Cabosky is an associate professor of public relations at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Space Travel for Billionaires Is the Surprise Topic with Bipartisan American Support But Not from Gen Z - Nextgov

Research in space exploration continues to grow at an exponential rate. Many new initiatives by private companies have aided in this growth, including Elon Musks numerous launch successes with SpaceX, Jeff Bezos recent ventures with Blue Origin, and Richard Bransons work with Virgin Galactic, to name a few.

This is in conjunction with the efforts of seasoned government organizations such as The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which has spearheaded much of the research, efforts, and foundation for space exploration and travel over the last 60+ years.

Alongside many private entities, NASA continues to foster cutting-edge initiatives in aerospace science. With growing interest worldwide regarding moon exploration and potential trips to Mars, NASA has announced a new program: the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA).

First colour photograph of the Martian planet surface, Viking 1 Mission to Mars, 1976. The Viking 1 ... [+] spacecraft, part of NASA's Viking programme, was the first spacecraft to land successfully on Mars and perform its mission. It sent images of the Martian surface back to Earth. Artist NASA. (Photo by Heritage Space/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

CHAPEA will entail a series of analog missions that will simulate year-long stays on the surface of Mars, with the goal of better preparing for future NASA missions and specific missions to Mars. As the program page describes, Each mission will consist of four crew members living in Mars Dune Alpha, an isolated 1,700 square foot habitat. During the mission, the crew will conduct simulated spacewalks and provide data on a variety of factors, which may include physical and behavioral health and performance. Furthermore, [to] obtain the most accurate data during the analog, the habitat will be as Mars-realistic as feasible, which may include environmental stressors such as resource limitations, isolation, equipment failure, and significant workloads. The major crew activities during the analog may consist of simulated spacewalks including virtual reality, communications, crop growth, meal preparation and consumption, exercise, hygiene activities, maintenance work, personal time, science work, and sleep.

The program will be critical in understanding how highly trained and motivated individuals will perform under the rigors and pressures of a Mars mission. Specifically, it will not only highlight operational challenges, but will also illuminate the physical and mental health challenges that future astronauts may encounter in long-duration space missions.

BOCA CHICA, TX - SEPTEMBER 28: A prototype of SpaceXs Starship is pictured at the company's Texas ... [+] launch facility on September 28, 2019 in Boca Chica near Brownsville, Texas. The Starship spacecraft is a massive vehicle meant to take people to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. (Photo by Loren Elliott/Getty Images)

Earlier this year, I wrote about new research efforts that are attempting to discover the effects of space travel on the human body. Unequivocally, decades of research indicates that space travel does impact human health in various degrees. One example I wrote about references a NASA fact sheet that specifically discusses muscle atrophy in space, and explains that Becauseastronauts work in a weightless environment, very little muscle contraction isneeded to support their bodies or move around [] Studies have shown that astronauts experience upto a 20 percent loss of muscle mass on spaceflights lasting five to 11 days.

Findings like this are crucial to the research and development efforts of NASA and other organizations interested in space travel. Especially as the space tourism industry expands and there continues to be growing interest in longer missions that go further away from Earth, finding solutions to safe-guard and augment human health in space missions is extremely valuable.

Indeed, initiatives such as NASAs CHAPEA serve an important purpose and will likely provide valuable insights that may be used for generations to come. Ultimately, it is promising to see that organizations such as NASA continue to push forth the boundaries of space exploration and science in a well-informed and planned manner which prioritizes the most important asset in any space mission: the health and safety of the crew members.

Read this article:

NASA Is Recruiting People For A Mars-Simulation To Understand The Physical, Mental And Operational Challenges Of Long-Duration Space Missions - Forbes

TIME Studios is producing the Netflix documentary series Countdown: Inspiration 4 Mission to Space, starting Sept. 6.

Jared Isaacman is not likely to forget the day he almost died at 10,000 ft., back in 2011. He was flying closely alongside three others, all in L-39 fighter jets, tearing along at 460 m.p.h. over the desert southwest of Las Vegas.

The group, part of Isaacmans Black Diamonds aerobatic team, was rehearsing for an air show and trying to come up with a flashy new finish. What they decided on called for flying in a square formation and then suddenly veering toward one another, before pulling back at the last second. It would be a nifty thing to watch go rightand a terrible thing to watch go wrong.

The pilots began the maneuver at their four separate corners and then banked in toward one another. But their coordination was a mess, and the fully fueled fighter jets came screaming toward one another.

Holy sh-t, exclaimed Isaacman over the radio. He yanked hard on his stick and veered sharply away; the others did the same. Shortly afterward, the Black Diamonds landed, gathered to debrief and reached three conclusions. First, they had gotten too close during the critical approach point. Second, the cause was most likely insufficient lateral spacing at the beginning. Third, they would never try such a high-stakes stunt again. Then they relaxedand laughed.

Jared Isaacman prepares for a ride in his MiG-29UB fighter jet during a crew training event in Belgrade, Mont., on Aug. 7, 2021.

Philip Montgomery for TIME

When you survive it, you can joke about it later, Isaacman says. After we debriefed, we were imagining if you were just a hiker in the desert looking up and youre like, Oh, look at that. And then you see this collision. It would be most unusual.

Most unusual is a decidedly understated way to describe ones own near-death experience, but Isaacmannow 38 and the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments, an onlinepayment company, as well as the founder of Draken International, a company that runs whats effectively the worlds largest private air forcehas always prided himself on a certain sangfroid. He needed it that day in 2011, and hell need it again this Sept. 15, when hes set to once again be part of a team of four trying something very daring.

This time, Isaacmans crew wont be flying at 10,000 ft., but a projected 360 miles uphigher than the Hubble Space Telescope. This time there wont be four vehicles, but just one: a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. And this time the fliers wont be moving at 460 m.p.h., but at 17,500 m.p.h., launched into space atop a 215-ft.-tall SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The mission, dubbed Inspiration4, will mark the first time an all-civilian, non-governmental crew has taken to orbit. To make the mission possible, Isaacman bought all four seats aboard the Dragon for an undisclosed sum (likely in the vicinity of $50 million each). And if he has his way, it will begin to democratize space in a way never before possible.

Photograph by Philip Montgomery for TIME

Get a print of TIMEs Inspiration4 cover here

I could have just invited a bunch of my pilot buddies to go, and we would have had a great time and come back and had a bunch of cocktails, Isaacman says. Instead, we wanted to bring in everyday people and energize everyone else around the idea of opening up spaceflight to more and more of us.

Isaacmans mission will be the capstone of what has been Americas summer of civilian spaceflight. On July 11, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson flew aboard his V.S.S. Unity space plane more than 50 miles high over New Mexico, crossing the boundary that the U.S. military considers the threshold of space. On July 20, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos bested Branson, flying aboard his New Shepard spacecraft above the 62-mile-high mark over Texascrossing the so-called von Karman line, the altitude that most experts consider spaces true boundary.

There has been much media sizzle around the Branson and Bezos missions, not least because of the Billionaire Space Race headlines. But in fact, the pair did not do a whole lot. Their flights were little more than 10-min. up-and-down suborbital lob shots. By contrast, Isaacman and his crew will spend three days in orbit, doing real science on a real mission. The SpaceX Dragon is largely automated, but as Isaacman puts it, its a multiday orbital mission, and theres just a lot of time for things to go wrong. So the Inspiration4 crew has been in intensive training in case anything indeed goes wrong.

The business of selecting that crew was as unconventional as the mission itself. The world learned about Inspiration4 from a 30-sec. commercial Isaacman paid to run during the 2021 Super Bowl. The spot announced not only the flight but also Isaacmans search for three other people to join him. One of Inspiration4s goals is to help raise funds for the St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, and for that reason one of the four seats would go to a St. Jude employee. (Isaacman aimed to raise $200 million for the hospital; he donated $100 million and has so far raised an additional $13.1 million.) Another seat would be awarded through a simple lottery, which contestants could enter by making a contribution of any size to St. Jude. The final seat would be a little harder to win, with contenders designing an online store using Shift4 software and then developing a social media campaign to share their entrepreneurial and space aspirations.

The St. Jude worker is Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a physician assistant and a survivor of childhood cancer; she will be the first person to fly to space with a prosthesisan artificial left femur that replaces the bone she lost to her disease when she was 10. The lottery winner is Chris Sembroski, 41, an engineer at Lockheed Martin in Everett, Wash., and a U.S. Air Force veteran who served in Iraq and who in a later domestic posting helped oversee a fleet of Minute-man nuclear missiles. The winner of the online-store competition is Sian Proctor, 51, a geosciences professor at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix and a two-time NASA astronaut candidate who in 2009 made it to the final 47 out of more than 3,500 candidates before being cut. Now, not only is she going to space, shes going sooner than she might have on the traditional route. At least one of the people chosen in that class in 2009 has not even had a chance to fly yet, says Proctor.

Yet questions surround not only this mission but also the entire enterprise of civilian spaceflight. For one thing, space travel is expensiveand to many people, the money could be better spent on solving the manifold problems on earth. In an auction for a seat aboard Bezos flight, the winnerwho later decided not to flybid $28 million. That could buy a lot of schoolbooks or feed a lot of hungry people.

Jared Isaacman briefs the Inspiration4 crew before a training session in Belgrade, Mont., on Aug. 7, 2021.

Philip Montgomery for TIME

Theres also the question of safety. Space can be a murderous place, a lesson each generation seems to have to learn anew. In 1967, NASAs Apollo 1 crew died in a launchpad fire that almost scuttled the countrys lunar program. In 1986 came the space shuttle Challenger disaster. Then, in 2003, the shuttle Columbia broke apart during re-entry. More than a few people worry that giddy ambition, human hubris and the limits of technology might conspire once again, just as were telling ourselves that the cosmic skies are safe for everyone.

When there is a fatal accident, says Terry Virts, a retired NASA astronaut and former International Space Station (ISS) commander, and I wouldnt say if, I would say when, thats going to be a real concern.

Isaacman sees things differently. Theres always a risk that something goes wrong, like a structural failure, he says. But you have confidence in the whole system and the measures that have gone into place to minimize the risk. Sometimes you land when your knees are clanking together and you say youre lucky to be alive. But you areand you move on.

Its entirely possible there would have been no Shift4 Paymentsnever mind Inspiration4if Jared Isaacman had been a more patient kid. The child of parents who were both on their second marriages, he came into the world with two half brothers and a half sister who are 15, 13 and nine years older. That chafednot so much the business of being so junior a member of the sibling brood, but, as he reached his teens, at the privileges age afforded his siblings and the ones it denied him.

They were out living their lives and I still had to raise my hand to use the restroom in school, and I was like, This is ridiculous,' he says.

Isaacman dropped out of high school in 1999, getting his GED to satisfy his parents. At the time, he and a high school classmate were trying to start their own computer and web business, but getting nowhere. So Isaacman went to work at tech retailer CompUSA, with the idea, he says, that I could generate business and I could poach some customers. As it turned out, a customera credit-card company called MSIpoached him to solve its IT problems.

I worked there for about six months, and like a lot of people, I totally disliked one of my bosses, he says. I saw an opportunity to do things better and more efficiently, so I left there and started the company that I still run today.

Isaacman named his new enterprise United Bank Card and slowly began generating a customer base from people he had met at MSI. The new companywhich he set up in his parents basementmarketed hardware and software allowing restaurants, bars and other businesses to process credit and debit-card transactions, a hot business amid the digitize-everything mania of the late 1990s.

Over the past 22 years, Isaacmans company has expanded and gobbled smaller firmsincluding one called Shift4, a name it took for itself (on a computer keyboard, holding shift and hitting 4 gets you a dollar sign). The company, now headquartered in Allentown, Pa., went public last year. It currently has 1,300 employees and a market capitalization of just over $7 billion. Today, if you go into any restaurant or bar in the U.S., theres a 50% chance your transaction is being processed by Shift4 equipment and software. In hotels, its about a 40% chance.

Jared Isaacman and his daughters at their apartment in New York City, July 2021.

Philip Montgomery for TIME

But Isaacman, as Shift4 chief of staff Terry Sullivan puts it, doesnt do things that sort of normal people do. Hes so full of ambition and just takes on these mountains of projects.

One of those projects was the unusual business of assembling his own private air force, with over 100 combat jets acquired from half a dozen countries. The forceknown as Draken after the Greek word for dragon, was formally founded as a private company in 2011; the U.S. military pays it to fly simulated dogfights with American pilots, training them against the kind of real weaponry that they could one day face in a genuine shooting war.

Draken was an outgrowth of Isaacmans love of flying, nurtured when he was 12 years old and attended space camp in Huntsville, Ala., where his parents agreed to spend an extra $75 to let him take introductory flying lessons on a Cessna 172. Plenty of people who start with a Cessna stick with a Cessna, but Isaacman was hungrier than that. He eventually got certified in 20 civilian and military jets, including the Soviet MiG-29. He also re-enrolled in school, at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, in Daytona Beach, Fla., earning an undergraduate degree in aerospace studies in 2012 while also setting up his Black Diamonds team.

Even before founding Draken and the Black Diamonds, Isaacman was itching to fly much higher. In 2008, he was invited to the Baikonur Cosmodromewhich is in Kazakhstan, but functions essentially as Russias Cape Canaveralto watch the launch of a Soyuz rocket that was carrying Richard Garriott, one of the worlds first paying space tourists.

It was amazing, says Isaacman. I mean, watching any rocket go up is pretty incredible, but watching a Soyuz go up is something else. Youre in this trench thats like 300 yd. awayits a par 3 away from the rocket. If youre at Kennedy Space Center, the closest youre going to get to a rocket going off is like three and a half miles.

The next year, Isaacman approached SpaceXwhich at the time was still more than a decade away from carrying its first crews to spaceabout buying a seat. A draft contract was hammered out, but it took SpaceX far longer than expected to get the go-ahead to fly human passengers, leaving the deal to languish and lapse. But in May of last year, SpaceX finally got its first two-person crew to the ISS, and Isaacman saw another opportunity.

I think at some point or other, I might fly on one of your rockets, he recalls telling a senior SpaceX official late last year. (Isaacman declines to disclose the names of any SpaceX officials with whom he has conducted discussions related to his mission.) To Isaacmans surprise, the official responded directlyand encouragingly. That may be coming along faster than you might think, the official said. Indeed it did: four hours later, Isaacman was put in touch over email with the head of SpaceXs human spaceflight program.

We understand you might be interested at some point in going on a flight with us, the program head told Isaacman on a follow-up call. Well, you could be the first private passengerand it could be inside of a year.

The two reached a verbal handshake, and all that was left was for Isaacman to break the news to his family. His wife Monica was not surprised. Theyve been together for 20 years, and she knew this was something hed been hankering to do for a long time. She agreed straightaway. For the couples two daughters, ages 7 and 5, the notion is more fanciful than real. To them, space is all Baby Yoda at this point, Isaacman says.

For the Inspiration4 crew, the past five months have been a flat-out sprint to their planned September launch. Isaacman, who assigned himself the position of commander, wants a tight, professional and prepared crew. He personally designed part of the training program, which in part called for flying each crew member in his Soviet MiG-29, exposing them to the kinds of g-forces theyll experience during liftoff and re-entry. Also on the agenda was a two-day hike up to 10,000 ft. on Mount Rainier in Washington State this past April.

We got snowed on a lot of the way, says Arceneaux, the St. Jude physician assistant, who made the hike despite her prosthetic femur. And our ham-and-cheese sandwiches wound up frozen.

The constant plodding upward really did me in, says Sembroski, the engineer. My legs were on fire.

That, in some ways, was the whole idea. We want to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, Isaacman says. A lot of things in the spacecraft will be uncomfortable, after all.

The rest of their training has mostly involved the usual NASA-style simulator and classroom work, only on a compressed timeline. On a recent day at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., the crew practiced opening and closing the hatch, what to do in the event of a pressure leak in the hatch seal, techniques for earth observation, and splashdown and recovery proceduresand that was all before lunch.

Im used to doing things on NASA time, which gives you two years to train for a mission, says Proctor. We have from March to September.

Once in space, the crew will be kept busy. Proctor will be the piloteffectively Isaacmans second in command and responsible for calling up checklists, monitoring systems and executing commands. Sembroski is mission specialist, responsible for repairs as well as proper stowing of cargo to avoid weight and balance issues. Arceneaux is the chief medical officer and will oversee most of the scientific experiments; shell take blood samples, for instance, to study the crews microbiomes.

The Inspiration4 crew at a training event in Belgrade, Mont., on Aug. 7, 2021.

Philip Montgomery for TIME

For all of the missions ambition, there remains the question of whether civilian astronauts ought to be flying to space at all. For one thing, the notion that the Bezos, Branson and Inspiration4 flights represent a great opening of the space door assumes that everyone can afford the quarter-million dollars Branson charges or the $50 million or so that the Inspiration4 seats probably cost. Its possible that costs will fall as the industry grows. But even if the price tag of a Branson mission were slashed by 80%, thats still $50,000 for 10 minutes in space.

Then theres that matter of whether that money could be better spent on earth. Of course, any single dollar spent on any enterpriseSilicon Valley tech, auto manufacturing, sports stadiumscould instead be spent on humanitarian causes. Yet space, to many, feels more frivolous, and thus gets hit harder by critics. But some say the case against space spending doesnt hold up.

These peopleBezos and Branson and Isaacmanarent spending money on themselves, says John Logsdon, the founder of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. Theyre spending money to create a business; these are business investments that create jobs and bolster the economy. If theyre successful, theyre risking their own money to build those businesses. Well, thats capitalism, right?

Theres also the question of safety. Isaacman often points out that it took only 12 years after Charles Lindberghs solo trip across the Atlantic before Pan Am introduced commercial transatlantic service. But physics has a say in this too. Commercial air service does not require the 4.9-mile-per-second speeds it takes to orbit earth, it does not regularly subject passengers to four gs, and it does not require passengers to climb atop the controlled bomb that is a Falcon 9 rocket. People have died in space; people have died merely trying to get to spacebut always in the service of a larger scientific and geopolitical mission. If people die in the service of something that seems less noble, the space market as a whole could dry up as fast as the dirigible business did following the Hindenburg disaster.

That kind of mortal danger attends all space flights, but Isaacman and his crew seem to have already priced it into their thoughts about the mission. They say they are confident that the hardware theyre flying will take them to and from space safely. And with good reason: the Falcon 9 rocket has been successfully launched more than 120 times, and while the Crew Dragon is a newer spacecraft, with only three crewed missions, it has flown admirably so far (Dragon has also flown more than 20 equally successful uncrewed missions).

I have so much faith in our SpaceX team that Im not nervous about a poor outcome, says Arceneaux. Ive met the lead engineers for every aspect of our mission, and they know what theyre doing. Inspiration4 is in wonderful hands.

Isaacman is equally confident. You just accept theres a very, very low probability of something going wrong, he says.

He should know. Hes come back from harrowing flying beforeand space, hes convinced, is an order of magnitude safer than air shows. His concern, he says, is more about performance. If Inspiration4 wont in fact kick the door to space travel wide open, allowing the rest of us to pour through after, it can at least crack that door, coming just a little closer to normalizing rocket travel and democratizing space. For Isaacman, that carries with it not just a responsibility to his crew, but to history to get the mission right.

I am constantly thinking about good execution, he says. We have to fly well; we have to earn the right to be here.

Correction: The original version of this story misstated the type of aircraft the Black Diamonds team was flying in 2011. They were flying L-39s, not F-14s.

TIME Studios is producing the Netflix documentary series Countdown: Inspiration 4 Mission to Space, starting Sept. 6.

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Write to Jeffrey Kluger at jeffrey.kluger@time.com.

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Inspiration4: The Quest to Push the Limits of Space Travel - TIME

Aug 14 (Reuters) - SpaceX founder Elon Musk said on Saturday the first orbital stack of the Starship rocket should be ready for flight in the coming weeks, taking the unorthodox billionaire a step closer to his dream of orbital and then interplanetary travel.

SpaceX in May successfully landed its Starship prototype, SN15, a reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle that could eventually carry astronauts and large cargo payloads to the moon and Mars. read more

The touchdown came after four prototype landing attempts had ended in explosions.

"First orbital stack of Starship should be ready for flight in a few weeks, pending only regulatory approval," Musk tweeted.

The complete Starship rocket, SpaceX's next-generation launch vehicle, stands 394 feet (120 meters) tall when coupled with its super-heavy first-stage booster.

It is at the center of the Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) CEO's ambitions to make human space travel more affordable and routine.

An orbital Starship flight is planned for year's end, and Musk has said he intends to fly Japanese billionaire entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa around the moon in the Starship in 2023. read more

Reporting by Jahnavi Nidumolu and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis and William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Musk says Starship orbital stack to be ready for flight in few weeks - Reuters