BENEFITS OF SPACE TOURISM PART 1

SPACE TOURISM ALREADY EXISTS. AAAS Science, June 14, 2024, reports, “In 2021, four passengers, including billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman, rode into space on a SpaceX rocket, orbiting Earth for 3 days in the company’s Dragon capsule before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean. The trip, financed by Isaacman and called Inspiration4, was the first privately funded orbital mission on a private rocket carrying private citizens—setting the stage for more routine tourist space travel today.”

Ramin Skibba continues in Science, “The astronauts also underwent intensive medical monitoring before, during, and after their flight. Now, researchers have analyzed how the space radiation and weightlessness they experienced affected their bodies, releasing a package of more than 40 studies, most of them based on Inspiration4 data. Published today in Nature journals, the Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) includes studies of the participants’ genomes, microbiomes, transcriptomes (the messenger RNA made from their genes), and proteomes (their panoply of proteins).” 

Here, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, are tidbits about these commercial astronauts, as well as from the AAAS Science report and the SOMA studies. 

The 2021 Inspiration4 Adventure. Wikipedia describes, “The trip was the first orbital spaceflight with only private citizens aboard and was part of a charitable effort on behalf of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. [Jared] Isaacman was named mission commander. The hospital selected two commercial astronauts: Hayley Arceneaux and Christopher Sembroski. Shift4 selected Sian Proctor who was named pilot.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 carries the Inspiration4, the first ever mission with exclusively private citizens, September 15, 2021. U.S. Space Force photo by Staff Stg. J.T. Armstrong.

Commercial (But Very Special) Astronauts. The term Commercial Astronaut is a new one, not surprising in that hitherto most U.S. astronauts have been members of the military. Jared Isaacman, billionaire founder of Shift4 Payments, financed the Inspiration4 mission as well as pledged a family donation of $125 million to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Elon Musk contributed $55 million. Ultimately St. Jude received more than $243 million.

Isaacman served a commander of the mission.

Sian Hayley Proctor, geology professor, artist, author, pilot, Major in the Civil Air Patrol, and science communicator, served as pilot of the mission. Born on Guam, she became the first African-American woman to pilot a spacecraft. 

Hayley Arceneaux has special affinity with St. Jude: As a 10-year-old, she developed osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. Wikipedia notes, “Her family turned to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for treatment and care, which included around a dozen rounds of chemotherapy, a limb-preservation surgery with knee replacement and placement of a titanium rod in her left thigh bone along with associated physical therapy. The experience inspired her to want to work with other cancer patients at St. Jude, which she does as a physician assistant working with leukemia and lymphoma patients.” She served as chief medical officer aboard Inspiration4.

Wikipedia cites Hayley saying, “She thinks she will be the first Cajun in space.” She is the first person to launch with a prosthesis. As part of the training, she climbed Mount Rainer in Washington with the rest of the Inspiration4 crew.

Christopher Sembroski, an Air Force veteran having trained as an Electro-Mechanical Technician, is a avionics engineer, amateur astronomer and rocketeer. During college he volunteered for ProSpace, a nonprofit advocating for private spaceflight; he later served as a counselor at Huntsville, Alabama’s Space Camp. 

Wikipedia recounts, “The spaceflight position was given to Sembroski by his friend Kyle Hippchen, as he was unable to accept the prize because he exceeded the weight limit of the Dragon vehicle.” 

The Inspiration4 Crew . From left to right, Sian Hayley Proctor, Jared Isaacman, Christopher Sembroski, and Hayley Arceneaux. 

Image by NASA/Norah Moran. 

Tomorrow in Part 2, we’ll see what Science magazine and the SOMA studies have to report about effects of their adventure. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024