Why SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission matters to everyone


Hayley Arceneaux, medical specialist on the Inspiration4 mission, in the Crew Dragon cupola against a backdrop of the Earth

Hayley Arceneaux, a physician’s assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and medical specialist on the Inspiration4 mission, in the Crew Dragon cupola.


Inspiration4x/Twitter

Imagine getting a call saying that if you want, you can join the rare group of less than a thousand humans who’ve not only visited space but orbited this planet. Oh, and the mission blasts off in about six months. 

That’s the call three Americans received earlier this year. And the offer wasn’t for the type of 15-minute joyride to the edge of space we recently saw from Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. We’re talking about a three-day sojourn in orbit, the sort of thing NASA astronauts spend their entire lives preparing for.

Sure, civilians have flown to the International Space Station before, but it typically required a personal fortune, a little influence and months or even years of training. The idea of plucking people from obscurity, Wonka-style, and sending them into orbit has been the stuff of science fiction.

Until now. 

As I wrote this, physician’s assistant Hayley Arceneaux and data engineer Chris Sembroski, both of whom had zero reason as of a year ago to expect they’d ever visit space, were whipping around this planet roughly every 90 minutes. 

They were joined by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and geologist Sian Proctor, who both have experience as pilots but no spaceflight experience. 

The quartet makes up the entirety of the crew of the Inspiration4 mission that splashed back down to Earth on Saturday. There was no professional astronaut chaperone from NASA on board, just four space novices cruising above Earth, performing research and making history. The mission is also billed as a fundraiser for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, where Arceneaux was a patient as a child and now works as a medical professional.

This was all bankrolled by Isaacman and possible thanks to SpaceX and its autonomous Crew Dragon spacecraft, the first new crewed spaceship (outside of China) that we’ve seen since the space shuttle made its debut decades ago. 

For space fanatics, this mission is a big deal, but several billion other humans can be forgiven for wondering why it matters that yet another wealthy person has financed a trip to space and invited a few randos to ride along. 

Inspiration for who?

First, it’s important to remember that new methods of transport have typically gone through the…



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