Yet another billionaire entrepreneur is set to ride into space this week, strapped inside the capsule of a SpaceX rocketship as part of an astro-tourist team poised to make history as the first all-civilian crew launched into Earth orbit.
Jared Isaacman, the American founder and chief executive of e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments (FOUR.N), will lead three fellow spaceflight novices on a three-day trip from blastoff at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to splashdown in the Atlantic.
The 38-year-old tech mogul has plunked down an unspecified but presumably exorbitant sum for fellow billionaire and SpaceX owner Elon Musk to fly Isaacman and three specially selected travel mates into orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
The crew vehicle, dubbed Resilience, was set for liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center atop one of Musk's reusable Falcon 9 rockets, with a five-hour targeted launch window that opens at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT) on Wednesday.
Forecasts on Sunday predicted a 70% chance of favorable weather conditions for launch, organizers said, on a flight directed entirely from the ground.
A successful flight could spawn a new era of commercial space tourism, with several firms vying for wealthy customers to pay a small fortune to experience the exhilaration of supersonic travel, weightlessness and the visual spectacle of space.
Setting acceptable levels of consumer risk in the inherently dangerous endeavor of rocket travel is also key, and raises a pointed question.
Source: www.reuters.com
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