Why is SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission to Earth orbit so important?

For starters, Inspiration4, which aims to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, is doing something new. It’s the first ever civilian mission to Earth orbit, and people who aren’t professional astronauts have orbited our planet before on a NASA space shuttle. , the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the Russian space station Mir and the International Space Station (ISS), and in fact, current NASA chief Bill Nelson is one of those people who flew on the Columbia STS-61-C in January 1986 when he was a member of the US House of Representatives .

But these hobbyists all traveled with professionals – NASA astronauts or Russian cosmonauts who survived a rigorous selection process and then trained for spaceflight as a regular part of their job. There would be no such existence in Inspiration 4.

That’s no cause for concern, and the Inspiration4 crew will fly aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, a highly automated, highly advanced spacecraft that has demonstrated its capabilities in multiple manned missions to the International Space Station for NASA. SpaceX’s six-month mission Crew-1 to the orbiting laboratory, which launched last April.

Inspiration4 will be less complex than Crew-1, zooming solo around Earth with no ISS rendezvous (although the flexibility will fly much higher than the orbiting laboratory on the next mission), and the Inspiration4 astronauts trained extensively, spending six months Since being selected in March to learn about the Crew Dragon and its systems and prepare for the various rigors of spaceflight.