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SpaceX launches its first private crewed mission to space

Spacex hits another milestone in its human spaceflight endeavors with the inspiration4 mission.

By Joey Roulette

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SpaceX launched four private citizens to space on Wednesday, kicking off the first-ever crewed mission to orbit without any professional astronauts on board. Dubbed Inspiration4, the mission marks the latest private foray into space as companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX compete to normalize space travel for paying tourists, not just government astronauts.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on time at 8:02PM ET from the company’s 39A launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, soaring from Florida’s east coast under clear night skies. Inside the capsule is billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, a trained pilot and founder of payment-processing firm Shift4 Payments, and three others he picked and paid for to ride with him: Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old physician assistant and cancer survivor; Christopher Sembroski, a data engineer at Lockheed Martin; and Sian Proctor, a geoscientist and former NASA astronaut candidate.

“The Dragon capsule and crew are in a nominal orbit”

The crew was buckled inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience capsule at the top of the rocket, reusing the spacecraft that sent four government astronauts to the International Space Station nearly a year ago. But for Inspiration4, the capsule won’t dock to the space station. It’s poised to spend roughly three days orbiting Earth at a higher altitude, some 360 miles above ground — the farthest human spaceflight since the last NASA space shuttle mission to repair the Hubble telescope in 2009.

Roughly nine minutes after liftoff, Falcon 9’s first stage booster returned to Earth for a landing on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. Minutes later, the Crew Dragon capsule separated from the rocket’s second stage as it was leaving Earth’s atmosphere, sending the Inspiration4 crew further toward orbit. The capsule will spend the next hour and a half gradually raising its orbit via intermittent thruster firings.

“The Dragon capsule and crew are in a nominal orbit,” SpaceX engineer and livestream anchor Andy Tran said. A live camera from inside the capsule showed the crew waving and giving double thumbs up.

The mission serves as a multimillion dollar fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, a non-profit research center that also provides free care for kids with cancer. Isaacman donated $100 million to the hospital and, with the Inspiration4 mission, aims to raise another $100 million. That part of the fundraiser has raised about $30.8 million so far. Isaacman, bankrolling most of the mission, won’t say how much he paid for each Crew Dragon seat, but they typically cost roughly $55 million a pop, according to a government watchdog report.

Inspiration4’s Crew Dragon capsule was tailored for a more touristy experience than what NASA astronauts have on their trips to the ISS. Months before the mission, SpaceX installed a massive glass dome, where the capsule’s station docking door normally is, to give Inspiration4 passengers a 360-degree view of space while in orbit. Though the glass dome hasn’t been tested in space, SpaceX’s director of crew mission management, Benji Reed, said it was put through a rigorous testing and qualification process before validating it as safe for flight.

The crew has a few activities planned during their stay in orbit — Sembroski is expected to play a ukulele made by Martin Guitar that’s stowed onboard as one of the several sponsorships riding along for the mission. Proctor brought along poetry and some personal art. And the whole crew is participating in a study on the effects microgravity has on the human body. SpaceX, Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine and investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine will collect biological samples from the passengers before the mission and plan to gather biomedical data on the passengers during the mission.

Exactly where and when the capsule reenters Earth’s atmosphere after its three-day mission depends on the weather conditions around the coasts of Florida. The capsule can spend up to a week in orbit if need be, Isaacman has said.

Update 8:45 PM ET: Updated with photos and additional information from SpaceX’s livestream.

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SpaceX announces first mission to space with all-civilian crew

SpaceX announced plans Monday for the first all-civilian mission to space, a major milestone for private spaceflight and the nascent space tourism industry .

The mission aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft will feature a four-person crew led by Jared Isaacman, the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, a Pennsylvania-based payment processing company. The flight is expected to launch sometime in the fourth quarter of this year, according to SpaceX.

“When you’ve got a brand new mode of transportation, you have to have pioneers,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk told NBC News’ Tom Costello in an interview with NBC Nightly News. “Things are expensive at first, and as you’re able to increase the launch rate, increase the production rate, refine the technology, it becomes less expensive and accessible to more people.”

Private citizens have flown to space before, but these space tourists typically paid to hitch rides into orbit alongside trained NASA astronauts or Russian cosmonauts. Isaacman’s flight will be the first time a crew made up entirely of private citizens will venture into space. The crewmembers will undergo training by SpaceX, including mission simulations for emergency preparedness and how to handle orbital mechanics during their flight.

Isaacman said in a statement that the mission, dubbed Inspiration4, is “the realization of a lifelong dream and a step towards a future in which anyone can venture out and explore the stars.”

Anyone, that is, with millions of dollars to spend on the ride. SpaceX did not disclose how much Isaacman paid for the flight.

But Musk said he hopes these early joyrides lay the groundwork for more space tourism in the future, beyond just billionaires who are able to afford the flights now.

"It's like when America went to the moon in '69 — it wasn't just a few people, humanity went to the moon," he said. "We all went there with them. And I think it's something similar here."

An all-civilian mission is a huge stepping stone for the private spaceflight industry, but it also presents enormous challenges. Musk said SpaceX’s top priority will be to maximize the safety of the crew.

“Any mission where there’s a crew onboard makes me nervous,” he said. “The risk is not zero.”

The expedition is part of a charity initiative to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. In addition to giving $100 million to St. Jude, Isaacman said he is donating the three other seats in the Dragon spacecraft to crewmembers who will be specially selected for the humanitarian flight.

“I appreciate this tremendous responsibility that comes with commanding this mission and I want to use this historic moment to inspire humanity while helping to end childhood cancer here on Earth,” Isaacman said.

The Inspiration4 mission will travel into orbit aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX has been launching rockets from Launch Complex 39A since 2017, and the historic pad was previously used for both space shuttle flights and Saturn V launches during NASA’s Apollo moon program.

During the multiday mission, the Dragon capsule will circle Earth once every 90 minutes along a customized flight path, according to SpaceX. At the end of the expedition, the spacecraft will re-enter the planet’s atmosphere and splash down off the coast of Florida.

Isaacman, a trained pilot who has flown both commercial and military aircraft , will command the historic mission. One spot on the flight is reserved for a St. Jude ambassador, while a second seat will be offered to a member of the public as part of a charity drive during the month of February.

For the final spot on the flight, Isaacman and Shift4 Payments will select an entrepreneur “who utilizes the new Shift4Shop eCommerce platform, which empowers entrepreneurs to build and grow successful eCommerce businesses online,” the company said in a statement. The competition began Monday and will run until Feb. 28, with the winner selected by an independent panel of judges.

Isaacman said the announcement of the Inspiration4 flight marks “the first step of a very exciting journey.”

The first space tourist, American multimillionaire Dennis Tito, launched to the International Space Station on an eight-day expedition in 2001. Tito reportedly paid $20 million to fly to the orbiting outpost aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Since then, only six other private citizens have flown in space, though the space tourism industry could soon be ramping up as companies such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origins and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic begin offering orbital jaunts later this year.

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Last month, SpaceX also announced that the first private space station crew, led by former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, will launch to the orbiting lab next January. Lopez-Alegria will be joined by three men who are each paying $55 million to spend eight days at the space station.

In 2018, SpaceX said Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, founder and CEO of the fashion retailer Zozo, would be the first private passenger to fly around the moon on a mission that is planned for sometime in 2023. Isaacman’s flight is not expected to venture as far, but Musk joked that SpaceX is open to other itineraries.

“It’s his mission,” Musk said. “He can go wherever he likes.”

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

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SpaceX finally sent humans to space. What happens next?

Privately owned orbital human spaceflights are here. A new era of commercialized space travel begins.

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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Demo-2 is off to a roaring start. After a delayed launch earlier in the week, the spacecraft lifted off at 3:22 pm ET on Saturday. It left the planet and entered Earth’s orbit, where it will later dock with the International Space Station (ISS), beginning a new era of commercial space tourism and exploration — all with the help of mercurial billionaire Elon Musk.

If all goes as planned , the Crew Dragon capsule, which rides on the top of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, will make a 19-hour trip to the ISS. The capsule is designed to fly mostly autonomously, but astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will take the controls while in Earth’s orbit to test out its manual capabilities. Docking with the ISS, however, is supposed to be completely autonomous, which is a new feature of the upgraded capsule . A second version of the capsule, the Cargo Dragon, is designed to use this automated docking for seamless deliveries to the ISS. After docking, the astronauts will live on the space station for a few months — the exact timing is not yet decided — before getting back in the Crew Dragon and returning to Earth.

Watch the launch and flight below:

As smoothly as the Saturday launch went, the mission’s success was not a certainty. Originally planned for Wednesday, that launch was canceled due to weather, and SpaceX’s program has suffered a few setbacks in its years-long quest to send people into space, including a few rocket launch failures. On Friday, a prototype of its Starship exploded during an engine fire test. Meanwhile, the new mission is called Crew Dragon Demo-2, because the Crew Dragon Demo-1 spacecraft exploded during a test in 2019. Before its failure, however, Demo-1 did make a successful uncrewed test flight to the ISS.

Assuming the rest of the mission goes according to plan, Crew Dragon Demo-2 will represent the biggest step yet toward the next phase of space travel, where vessels owned by private companies, rather than government bodies, send astronauts and paying tourists into orbital space. Part of this exciting future could involve space exploration, including trips back to the moon and on to Mars. It will also show us the true potential of the space tourism industry.

Space is billionaires’ newest playground

Space tourism isn’t completely new. Seven people have paid their way into orbital space, though none since 2009. They took rockets through the Russian space program, but it looks like the American companies will lead the way in the future of commercial space travel. Other US-based private companies founded by billionaires, like Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, are hoping to offer trips into suborbital space as early as this year. Both companies hope to go further, with Virgin Galactic dreaming of “Earth orbiting hotels” and Blue Origin envisioning flying people “to Earth orbit and beyond.”

Aside from the historic nature of a private space company sending a crewed mission into orbital space for the first time ever, NASA was particularly excited about this SpaceX launch because it signals its return to sending people into space from American soil. Since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, NASA astronauts have been forced to buy seats on Russian rockets to get to space. Having the SpaceX option available means cheaper seats and, of course, national pride. By partnering with private companies like SpaceX and Boeing for its Commercial Crew program — giving them billions in government funding to build their own vessels — NASA still saves billions of dollars over its old model, a purely government-run space flight program that hired private companies to manufacture its equipment.

“The ownership of the intellectual property also incentivizes the companies to find new sources of revenue to further increase their return on investment,” Casey Dreier, chief advocate and senior space policy adviser for The Planetary Society, told Recode. “This seems to have worked, as we see that both Boeing and SpaceX are developing crew vehicles at a cost savings we haven’t seen in the modern era.”

Now that it’s launched humans into orbit, it seems clear that SpaceX has a significant lead over its competitors in the commercial space industry. This is after the company foundered for several years before successfully launching its own rockets, then building a successful business sending satellites into orbit and delivering supplies to the ISS over nearly 100 launches. SpaceX was also able to create a partially reusable rocket that can return itself to Earth and land on a drone barge — which also went off without a hitch on Saturday. Reusing the rockets cuts the cost of each launch significantly for SpaceX and, therefore, lowers the price for its customers.

The shift from a publicly funded space program to a privately led one is reflected in everything from Crew Dragon’s interior to its astronauts’ exterior. Sleek touchscreens have replaced the dials and switches that dominated the NASA shuttle cockpits, and the astronauts are wearing cool, new-look spacesuits specially designed for SpaceX by a movie costume designer. Notably, astronauts Behnken and Hurley rode out to the Crew Dragon Demo-2 in white Teslas emblazoned with NASA logos.

Then, of course, there’s Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002 and has since become a bit of a madman celebrity. Musk’s erratic behavior over the years has drawn controversy and negative attention to the companies he runs — including, for Tesla, a $20 million fine from the Securities and Exchange Commission — but he behaved himself on the scene of his ship’s historical launch.

“This is the culmination of a dream,” Musk told CBS ahead of the launch. “This is a dream come true.”

Mars and the Moon: The next steps for privately operated spaceflight

With this crucial first crewed flight achieved, the question now becomes: what’s next? What will the future of commercialized space travel look like? Will Mars be covered with Tesla ads? Will Earth stores sell real moon rocks? Will Jupiter be populated with Amazon warehouses? Should we book moon hotel reservations now to beat the rush?

All we know for sure now is that commercial space travel does have a future, and experts are optimistic about what it holds.

“NASA’s Commercial Crew Program with SpaceX and Boeing is restoring American launch capability to the ISS, which is an amazing facility that orbits our planet every 90 minutes,” Mary Lynne Dittmar, president and CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, told Recode. “The ISS is a critical testbed for a huge range of technologies needed for humans to venture deeper out into space, to the Moon and beyond to Mars.”

But they also stress that private companies aren’t doing this alone. Space tourism is currently an option only for the very rich. Few people can afford the current $55 million price tag for a seat on one of SpaceX’s rockets. Governments, however, have deeper pockets. SpaceX could not have achieved its recent success without NASA’s funding, and that will likely also be necessary as the limits of space travel continue to be pushed.

“Commercializing space, particularly with humans, is still very tenuous,” Dreier, from the Planetary Society, said. “It’s important here to remember that this ‘commercial’ program has the government as its primary customer. The market for human spaceflight in Earth orbit is still unknown.”

The economics of space travel will also have an effect on space research. As Dreier explained, private investment in space might prioritize certain kinds of missions over others, leaving science-driven missions with no obvious financial return to continue to rely on public funding.

Ariel Ekblaw, the founder and lead of MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative, offered a more specific interpretation of what the future of commercial space travel might look like.

“I view this very much as part of a broader ecosystem of development that we’re seeing for commercial activity in low Earth orbit,” Ekblaw told Recode.

To that end, companies like Bigelow and Axiom have proposed building their own commercial space stations. Spacecraft built by SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, Boeing, and others may be the primary mode of transportation to them.

Looking beyond low Earth orbit is NASA’s Artemis Program, which hopes to put humans back on the Moon by 2024. NASA recently gave SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics $1 billion to create human lunar landing systems. There’s also the possibility that businesses will be, well, businesses, putting money over making space accessible to all. One of the goals at MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative involves democratizing access to space exploration by encouraging and helping people from all disciplines to do or send their work into space.

“The public should have some voice in this,” Ekblaw said. “Space really is one of the most ultimate examples of the commons for humanity, so we should be thoughtful in the way in which we’re going about commercialization in low Earth orbit.”

And, of course, there’s that crewed mission to Mars, largely seen as the next frontier in human space exploration and Musk’s impetus for starting SpaceX in the first place. Ekblaw thinks that will happen in our lifetime.

“I do still see NASA and space agencies as having a major role in that achievement,” Ekblaw said. “But the technology for transportation to get us there may very well come from Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.”

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World’s 1st space tourist signs up for flight around moon

The world’s first space tourist has signed up to spin around the moon aboard Elon Musk’s Starship. For Dennis Tito, it’s a chance to relive the joy of his trip 21 years ago to the International Space Station. (Oct. 12)

This photo provided by SpaceX photo shows Dennis Tito and his wife, Akiko, at the company’s Starship rocket base near Boca Chica, Texas, on Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. The couple has booked a flight to the moon on SpaceX’s Starship. (SpaceX via AP)

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FILE - U.S. multimillionaire Dennis Tito gives a thumbs up shortly after his landing in the Central Asian steppes, 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakstan on May 6, 2001. The world’s first space tourist has signed up to spin around the moon aboard Elon Musk’s Starship. For Dennis Tito, it’s a chance to relive the joy of his trip 21 years ago to the International Space Station. (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel, File)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The world’s first space tourist wants to go back — only this time, he’s signed up for a spin around the moon aboard Elon Musk’s Starship.

For Dennis Tito, 82, it’s a chance to relive the joy of his trip to the International Space Station, now that he’s retired with time on his hands. He isn’t interested in hopping on a 10-minute flight to the edge of space or repeating what he did 21 years ago. “Been there, done that.”

His weeklong moonshot — its date to be determined and years in the future — will bring him within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the lunar far side. He’ll have company: his wife, Akiko, and 10 others willing to shell out big bucks for the ride.

Tito won’t say how much he’s paying; his Russian station flight cost $20 million.

The couple recognize there’s a lot of testing and development still ahead for Starship, a shiny, bullet-shaped behemoth that’s yet to even attempt to reach space.

“We have to keep healthy for as many years as it’s going to take for SpaceX to complete this vehicle,” Tito said in an interview this week with The Associated Press. “I might be sitting in a rocking chair, not doing any good exercise, if it wasn’t for this mission.”

Tito is actually the second billionaire to make a Starship reservation for a flight around the moon. Japanese fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa announced in 2018 he was buying an entire flight so he could take eight or so others with him, preferably artists. The two men both flew to the space station, from Kazakhstan atop Russian rockets, 20 years apart.

Tito kicked off space tourism in 2001, becoming the first person to pay his own way to space and antagonizing NASA in the process. The U.S. space agency didn’t want a sightseer hanging around while the station was being built. But the Russian Space Agency needed the cash and, with the help of U.S.-based Space Adventures, launched a string of wealthy clients to the station through the 2000s and, just a year ago, Maezawa.

Well-heeled customers are sampling briefer tastes of space with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic expects to take paying passengers next year.

Starship has yet to launch atop a Super Heavy booster from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. At 394 feet (120 meters) and 17 million pounds (7.7 million kilograms) of liftoff thrust, it’s the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. NASA already has contracted for a Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in 2025 or so, in the first lunar touchdown since Apollo.

Tito said the couple’s contract with SpaceX, signed in August 2021 and announced Wednesday, includes an option for a flight within five years from now. Tito would be 87 by then and he wanted an out in case his health falters.

“But if I stayed in good health, I’d wait 10 years,” he said.

Tito’s wife, 57, said she needed no persuading. The Los Angeles residents are both pilots and understand the risks. They share Musk’s vision of a spacefaring future and believe a married couple flying together to the moon will inspire others to do the same.

Tito, who sold his investment company Wilshire Associates almost two years ago, said he doesn’t feel guilty splurging on spaceflight versus spending the money here on Earth.

“We’re retired and now it’s time to reap the rewards of all the hard work,” he said.

Tito expects he’ll also shatter preconceived notions about age, much as John Glenn’s space shuttle flight did in 1998. The first American to orbit the Earth still holds the record as the oldest person in orbit.

“He was only 77. He was just a young man,” Tito said. “I might end up being 10 years older than him,”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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International Edition

September 30, 2011

SpaceX Unveils Plan for World's First Fully Reusable Rocket

A reusable rocket and spaceship could open the gates of Mars for humanity, company CEO Elon Musk announced

By Mike Wall & SPACE.com

The private spaceflight firm SpaceX will try to build the world's first completely reusable rocket and spaceship, a space travel method that could open the gates of Mars for humanity, the company's milionaire CEO Elon Musk announced Thursday (Sept. 29). 

A fully reusable rocket would dramatically decrease the cost of lofting cargo and humans to space, making the exploration and colonization of other worlds such as Mars more feasible, Musk said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Musk did not guarantee success, acknowledging the daunting task his SpaceX team has taken on. SpaceX released a video animation of its proposed reusable rocket and space capsule system to illustrate how it would work. [ Video and photos of SpaceX's reusable rocket plan ]

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"We will see if this works," Musk said. "And if it does work, it'll be pretty huge."

The hunt for an economic and reusable method for space travel has been a goal of many companies and government agencies from the Space Age's inception.

The only reusable manned spaceships built to date have been NASA's winged space shuttles , which were retired this year. The shuttles used reusable orbiters and solid rocket boosters for 30 years, but the system was not completely reusable.

Each of NASA's 135 shuttle missions also used a disposable 15-story external fuel tank. The tank was jettisoned once a shuttle reached orbit and ultimately burned up during re-entry.

Going to Mars? Musk has said repeatedly over the years that he founded SpaceX in 2002 with the primary goal of helping humanity establish a lasting presence beyond Earth. Such expansion is necessary to ensure our species' survival, according to Musk, since a catastrophic asteroid strike or other calamity could one day wipe out life on our home planet.

Mars is a prime candidate for human settlement, and Musk has said he hopes SpaceX can send astronauts to the Red Planet within 10 or 20 years.

Colonizing Mars — or any other world — would require ferrying thousands of people and millions of tons of cargo through space. That's just not feasible with today's launch costs, Musk has said.

But a fully reusable rocket could change the equation dramatically. Musk illustrated the point by citing SpaceX's Falcon 9, which costs between $50 million to $60 million per launch in its current configuration.

"But the cost of the fuel and oxygen and so forth is only about $200,000," Musk said."So obviously, if we can reuse the rocket, say, a thousand times, then that would make the capital cost of the rocket for launch only about $50,000." [ Vote Now! Best Spaceships of All Time ]

How it would work In its video new animation, SpaceX officials detail how their new launch vehicle, which is based on the Falcon 9 rocket, would work.

After separating in orbit, the two stages of the rocket would come back to Earth and land at the launch pad. The stages would not glide back using wings like the space shuttle; rather, they'd descend vertically, eventually settling down on four legs.

They could then be refueled, reintegrated and relaunched.

In the video, the Falcon 9 launches SpaceX's Dragon capsule to the International Space Station . NASA has contracted the company to make cargo flights to the orbiting lab.

Falcon 9 lofted Dragon to Earth orbit for the first time last December, and SpaceX plans to launch a demonstration mission docking Dragon to the station in January 2012. If all goes well with that one, Dragon's next flight would be an operational cargo mission, SpaceX officials have said.

Dragon is also designed to be reusable, and SpaceX is modifying it to carry crew as well as supplies. The company hopes NASA eventually uses Dragon to launch its astronauts to low-Earth orbit. The country has lacked this capability since NASA's space shuttle fleet retired in July and currently depends on Russian Soyuz vehicles to provide this taxi service.

Musk did not say when he hopes the reusable rocket would be operational, or how much its development would cost. But SpaceX is going to give the enterprise its best shot.

"We have a design that on paper — doing the calculations, doing the simulations — it does work," Musk said. "Now we need to make sure those simulations and reality agree because generally, when they don't, reality wins."

The Falcon and Dragons of SpaceX

SpaceX: Fully Reusable Rockets in the Works

Spaceships of the World: 50 Years of Human Spaceflight

© 2011 TechMediaNetwork.com . All rights reserved.

America’s New Vision of Astronauts

Once, American astronauts were white men with buzz cuts. Now they’re billionaires and a few lucky normal people.

The mission had gone smoothly from start to finish. “Thanks for flying SpaceX,” an engineer said as the spaceship splashed back down to Earth, prompting laughs in the mission-control room. SpaceX’s passengers, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, were experienced spacefarers, trained and employed by NASA, but they were the first people the private company had launched into orbit. The line was heavy with relief— we did it; we brought these astronauts home —and hope, the feeling of a long-distant goal coming into view. This could be the first of many flights, not just for astronauts, but for regular folks too.

Less than a year later, SpaceX is already planning to jump into that next era of spaceflight.

Elon Musk announced yesterday that the company will send four non-astronauts into orbit around Earth for a few days, perhaps as soon as the end of this year. The mission, the first all-civilian trip of its kind, will be led by Jared Isaacman, a founder and the CEO of Shift4 Payments, a payment-processing company.

Isaacman has chartered a SpaceX rocket and a Crew Dragon capsule for himself and three other passengers, and will serve as mission commander. He is a 37-year-old tech billionaire and a licensed pilot who knows how to fly fighter jets, but he has never been to space. Neither have the other passengers.

One passenger, whom Isaacman has already picked, is a health-care worker who works with children with cancer, and she’s a cancer survivor herself. Another will be randomly selected this month in a raffle meant to raise millions of dollars for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The final passenger will be chosen in an online competition organized by Isaacman’s company.

Read: The outdated language of space travel

When they step onto SpaceX’s craft, they will become a crew unlike any other in history. The question of who can be an astronaut has never been more open-ended. Half a century ago, the people who decided who went to space worked at NASA and other space agencies. Now they’re people rich enough to see the beauty of Earth against the darkness of space for themselves, and rich enough to decide who should come with them.

So unprecedented is this situation that when a reporter asked Musk at a recent press conference about how SpaceX plans to handle liability insurance for this kind of adventure, Musk wasn’t sure. “I think this may be [an] ‘at their own risk’ type of thing,” he said. “I don’t know.”

Astronauts have always been selected to represent a certain vision of America. In the beginning, they all worked for NASA. They had flown combat missions in wars. They were white men with buzz cuts. In the early 1960s, a Black Air Force pilot was in the running to become a NASA astronaut, but his training was marred by racism, and the agency didn’t select him, never providing an explanation why. Around the same time, John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, said in a congressional hearing about gender discrimination in NASA’s astronaut program: “The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.” Twenty-four people have flown to the moon , and all were white men.

Read: Why women weren’t allowed to be astronauts

Over the years, this vision of astronauts has shifted. The first Black American and the first American woman flew on the space shuttle in 1983. Space-shuttle assignments eventually moved beyond historic firsts and toward diverse crews. NASA stopped referring to space travel as “manned,” favoring the more inclusive “crewed” or “human.” Last month, NASA announced which of its astronauts will train specifically for a future moon mission; of the 18, half are women .

Private citizens have flown to space before, but they have always gone on government-owned spacecraft, and with trained astronauts at their side. They were simply rich enough to afford it, paying about $20 million for the voyage. Two American politicians flew on the shuttle in the 1980s, but they had something else going for them: Both men sat on the congressional committees in charge of NASA’s budget.

Last week, it was announced that three people had paid $55 million each for SpaceX to fly them to the International Space Station for an eight-day visit, accompanied by a former astronaut. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, reportedly plans to charge $200,000 to $300,000 for trips to the edge of space, where passengers can experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s company, will charge $250,000 for flights on its fleet of rocket-powered planes. (Virgin Galactic has already flown a few of its employees high into the atmosphere and into weightlessness, and while they didn’t reach orbit, the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates space launches, considers them commercial astronauts.)

Read: The false hope of an American rocket launch

Isaacman won’t say how much he’s paying to charter his historic mission, but you can certainly bet it’s a lot. The billionaire has introduced another factor into the criteria for being an astronaut—luck. There are still some basic restrictions, such as passing a medical screening and meeting height requirements for the cramped Dragon capsule. (“If you can go on a roller-coaster ride, like an intense roller-coaster ride, you should be fine for flying on Dragon,” Musk said.) Isaacman’s company plans to run a commercial during this weekend’s Super Bowl to advertise the mission, a PR move NASA has never tried. In the case of one of Isaacman’s passengers, the decision makers will be “a panel of independent judges” choosing who did the best job in an online competition involving something called the “Shift4Shop eCommerce platform.”

The financial prerequisites for spaceflight threaten to again narrow the population of people who get to go to space—the three passengers who paid $55 million for their SpaceX rides are all white men—but Isaacman said that he’s aware the composition of his crew will send a message about who space is for . “This absolutely will be diverse,” Isaacman said of his mission’s crew.

Isaacman and the other passengers will receive formal training from SpaceX, including emergency simulations. The Dragon capsule operates with more autonomy than perhaps any other crewed spacecraft in history; when Hurley and Behnken launched from Cape Canaveral last year, SpaceX flight software piloted them to the ISS. The astronauts took over manual control and maneuvered the capsule for a bit, to see how it handled, but the Dragon didn’t need their assistance to gently dock to the station.

Read: Even astronauts binge-watch TV while in space

SpaceX has so far flown six professional astronauts, and more are scheduled to launch this spring. By the time Isaacson and his crew launch, the SpaceX astronaut program will be quite flight-tested and astronaut-approved. It will even be—and this is a remarkable thing to say about space travel—a little customizable. More than once on the recent call with reporters, Musk deferred to Isaacman on questions about mission specifics such as the duration of the journey. “The mission parameters are up to Jared,” Musk said, before addressing the soon-to-be mission commander: “If you decide later you want to do a different mission, you totally can.”

The rest of the press conference was similarly casual, even lighthearted. When Isaacman said that he would prepare the crew for Dragon’s cramped quarters by making them spend time together in a mountainside tent, Musk joked that “everyone’s got to eat a giant bean burrito.” One reporter asked whether SpaceX would bend some space-travel rules and allow passengers to bring champagne. This mood should not give anyone a false impression about human spaceflight. SpaceX might be ready to launch people into space on a regular basis, but that doesn’t mean the work is routine. It’s still dangerous.

SpaceX knows this; over the years, employees have received briefings about the aftermath of the two space-shuttle disasters, which together killed 14 astronauts, and the launchpad fire during the Apollo program that killed three. “We hold the lives of people in our hands,” Benji Reed, the senior director for human-spaceflight programs at SpaceX, told me last year. “We take it very, very seriously.” The big reveal of Isaacman’s mission coincided with the 17th anniversary of the Columbia disaster. In the past, astronauts have matched the risk of spaceflight with a sense of mission, as representatives of nations. Any personal excitement about leaving the planet was buoyed by a feeling of duty. When Isaacman and the rest of his crew strap in, they will be taking similar risks, but for new reasons.

SpaceX Unveils Plan for World's First Fully Reusable Rocket

This story was updated at 5:57 p.m. EDT.

The private spaceflight firm SpaceX will try to build the world's first completely reusable rocket and spaceship, a space travel method that could open the gates of Mars for humanity, the company's milionaire CEO Elon Musk announced Thursday (Sept. 29).

A fully reusable rocket would dramatically decrease the cost of lofting cargo and humans to space, making the exploration and colonization of other worlds such as Mars more feasible, Musk said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Musk did not guarantee success, acknowledging the daunting task his SpaceX team has taken on. SpaceX released a video animation of its proposed reusable rocket and space capsule system to illustrate how it would work. [ Video and photos of SpaceX's reusable rocket plan ]

"We will see if this works," Musk said. "And if it does work, it'll be pretty huge."

The hunt for an economic and reusable method for space travel has been a goal of many companies and government agencies from the Space Age's inception.

The only reusable manned spaceships built to date have been NASA's winged space shuttles , which were retired this year. The shuttles used reusable orbiters and solid rocket boosters for 30 years, but the system was not completely reusable.

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Each of NASA's 135 shuttle missions also used a disposable 15-story external fuel tank. The tank was jettisoned once a shuttle reached orbit and ultimately burned up during re-entry.

Going to Mars?

Musk has said repeatedly over the years that he founded SpaceX in 2002 with the primary goal of helping humanity establish a lasting presence beyond Earth. Such expansion is necessary to ensure our species' survival, according to Musk, since a catastrophic asteroid strike or other calamity could one day wipe out life on our home planet.

Mars is a prime candidate for human settlement, and Musk has said he hopes SpaceX can send astronauts to the Red Planet within 10 or 20 years.

Colonizing Mars — or any other world — would require ferrying thousands of people and millions of tons of cargo through space. That's just not feasible with today's launch costs, Musk has said.

But a fully reusable rocket could change the equation dramatically. Musk illustrated the point by citing SpaceX's Falcon 9, which costs between $50 million to $60 million per launch in its current configuration.

"But the cost of the fuel and oxygen and so forth is only about $200,000," Musk said."So obviously, if we can reuse the rocket, say, a thousand times, then that would make the capital cost of the rocket for launch only about $50,000." [ Vote Now! Best Spaceships of All Time ]

How it would work

In its video new animation, SpaceX officials detail how their new launch vehicle, which is based on the Falcon 9 rocket, would work.

After separating in orbit, the two stages of the rocket would come back to Earth and land at the launch pad. The stages would not glide back using wings like the space shuttle; rather, they'd descend vertically, eventually settling down on four legs.

They could then be refueled, reintegrated and relaunched.

In the video, the Falcon 9 launches SpaceX's Dragon capsule to the International Space Station . NASA has contracted the company to make cargo flights to the orbiting lab.

Falcon 9 lofted Dragon to Earth orbit for the first time last December, and SpaceX had been planning to launch a demonstration mission docking Dragon to the station in January 2012. SpaceX officials announced late today (Sept. 30) that the firm could be ready to launch the next Dragon test flight by Dec. 19, but that target is still awaiting review by the U.S. Air Force and NASA.

Whenever that demo launches, if all goes well, Dragon's next flight would be an operational cargo mission to the space station, SpaceX officials have said.

Dragon is also designed to be reusable, and SpaceX is modifying it to carry crew as well as supplies. The company hopes NASA eventually uses Dragon to launch its astronauts to low-Earth orbit. The country has lacked this capability since NASA's space shuttle fleet retired in July and currently depends on Russian Soyuz vehicles to provide this taxi service.

Musk did not say when he hopes the reusable rocket would be operational, or how much its development would cost. But SpaceX is going to give the enterprise its best shot.

"We have a design that on paper — doing the calculations, doing the simulations — it does work," Musk said. "Now we need to make sure those simulations and reality agree because generally, when they don't, reality wins."

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall . Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook .

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with  Space.com  and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

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SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic: Who’s who in private space travel?

Evan Gower With over a decade of experience in digital publishing. Evan leads our team with a keen eye for emerging tech trends. Read more March 24, 2016

In the West, NASA is synonymous with space travel. That’s understandable: the space agency not only put a man on the moon in 1969, but also launched the Hubble Telescope, pioneered the reusable space shuttle, sent probes to Uranus and Neptune , and hugely increased our knowledge of asteroids, and Pluto thanks to New Horizons. The plan is still for NASA to put humans on Mars within a generation, but the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel thinks that’s a long shot thanks to a lack of innovative technology and a funding gap.

When NASA retired its space-shuttle fleet seven years ago, the door was open for the private sector to pick up the slack with rocket and space-station construction. This side-steps an awful lot of red tape, although it raises vaguely troubling questions about profitability over the sum total of human knowledge. Nonetheless, a number of private enterprises have stepped up to the plate. Here are some of the key players.

Established all the way back in 2002 by Elon Musk – fresh off the back of selling PayPal to eBay – SpaceX was founded to reduce the cost of space travel and push us ever closer to colonising Mars, a goal that Musk is extremely passionate about .

The best way to reduce the cost of space travel? Reusable rockets – namely its Falcon 9, and its Falcon Heavy.

Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the reliable and safe transport of satellites and the Dragon spacecraft into orbit. Falcon 9 is the  first orbital class rocket capable of reflight . SpaceX believes rocket reusability is the key breakthrough needed to reduce the cost of access to space and enable people to live on other planets.

SpaceX said the Falcon 9 “was designed from the ground up for maximum reliability.” It has two stages and the first stage features nine engines meaning it can safely complete its mission even in the event of an engine shutdown.

Since 2006, SpaceX has had a contract from NASA to resupply cargo to the International Space Station. The Falcon 9 made history in 2012 when it delivered the Dragon capsule into the correct orbit for the ISS, making SpaceX the first commercial company ever to visit the station. Since then Falcon 9 has made moe than a dozen trips to space, delivering satellites to orbit as well as delivering and returning cargo from the space station for NASA. The full manifest, including future missions is here .

Musk’s Falcon Heavy launched for the first time  on 6 February, bringing one of his own sports cars into orbit with it. Falcon Heavy provides twice the thrust of the next largest rocket currently flying, according to Musk. He added that Falcon Heavy has around 2/3 of the thrust of the Saturn V moon rocket.

It was announced in September that SpaceX will launch its first tourist mission in 2023, and already has a passenger lined up: Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. SpaceX has cited this upcoming mission as “an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of travelling to space.”

Blue Origin

Then there’s Blue Origin, which was founded back in 2000 by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. In an interview 11 years later , Bezos explained the company’s mission in two sentences: “If you really want to make it so that anybody can go into space, you have to increase the safety and decrease the cost. That’s Blue Origin’s mission.”

Like SpaceX, Blue Origin sees reusing rockets as the most efficient way to do this, which often sees the two companies being mentioned in the same breath. In 2016, the company successfully managed to land a rocket safely back on Earth for the second time in a row , which sounds suspiciously similar to SpaceX’s achievements. However, as Wait But Why succinctly put it , that’s where the similarities end:

“You have SpaceX trying to land a rocket that’s going much higher and much, much faster than Blue Origin’s, but with far less fuel to use for descent. This isn’t to take anything away from Blue Origin’s awesome accomplishment, but it shouldn’t even be talked about in the same conversation with SpaceX’s attempts at landing a rocket.”

That could change with time, of course, but on top of that, Blue Origin’s focus is – on the surface at least – more commercial than anything else. The company orignally aimed for commercial space flights by 2018 , but it looks as though this goal is being pushed back.

But as Bezos told Florida Today  last year, this too is a means to an end, advancing technology through commercial interest. Likening the early commercial space flights to the first years of the aeroplane, he explained: “The entertainment mission became a very important mission that led to lots of flights and lots of airplanes being manufactured. And that led to better airplanes. And then you get air mail and so on and so on.”

Virgin Galactic

You can’t mention space tourism without considering Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. Founded back in 2004, it’s now seven years since Virgin Galactic’s maiden commercial flight was supposed to go ahead, but that date has already been pushed back a number of times – and we’re still waiting. Some more patiently than others: it was reported back in 2014 that, after repeated delays, 3% of customers had not unreasonably demanded refunds of their $200,000 deposits, still leaving the company with 680 paid-up customers.

They may also have pulled out due to safety concerns, with a high-profile crash that killed a pilot in 2014 leaving future plans very much in doubt. As Tom Bower, author of Branson: Behind the Mask, said : “They spent 10 years trying to perfect one engine and failed. They are now trying to use a different engine and get into space in six months. It’s just not feasible.”

In test flights to date, the company has only managed altitudes of 71,000ft – more than twice your standard commercial flight, but still less than a third of the 320,000ft aimed for.

Branson’s not aiming for Mars, and wants, instead, to conquer commercial space travel. Last year, he said he was planning on being in space by early 2018. Clearly, that didn’t happen, but that has not discouraged the company. In a recent interview with CNBC, Branson claimed that Virgin Galactic will be in space within the next few weeks. No specific date was given for this supposed event.

“We will be in space with myself in months and not years,” he said. “We will be in space with people not too long after that.”

Orbital ATK

Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos…it may sound like private space travel is the sole preserve of prominent rich entrepreneurs, but Orbital ATK has no such easily identifiable figure, and is the lowest profile here despite being the oldest by some margin: it’s the merger of two companies founded in 1982 (Orbital Sciences Corporation) and 1990 (parts of Alliant Techsystems).

TechRadar describes them as “the closest thing we’ve got to a privatised version of NASA”, and the company certainly has plenty of successes to back that up – not least of all the $1.9 billion contract it has with NASA to fly cargo to the International Space Station, with its Cygnus rocket able to deliver 2,000kg of pressurised cargo.

Despite its heritage though, even Orbital ATK isn’t immune from accidents. NASA saw this firsthand in October 2014 when the company’s third cargo mission ended in the Antares rocket exploding upon launch.

That was the third resupply mission to fail that year, joining another from SpaceX and the Russian vehicle Progress M-59 . With something as difficult as space travel, accidents happen, whether it’s private companies or NASA itself .

“Space is hard,” as the old expression goes – just as well there’s plenty of competition, ensuring our best minds have extra incentive to crack it once and for all.

READ NEXT: What animals have made the trip to space?

Images: 0x0077BE , and a composite of Daly3d , OnInnovation and Steve Jurvetson used under Creative Commons

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