ELON Musk has sent four members of the public into orbit on a SpaceX flight.
The four civilians make up a team called Inspiration4 and made history last night when they blasted into space from Florida.
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The Inspiration 4 mission, which is the first chartered passenger flight for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, took place at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
It’s considered a major leap for space tourism.
Commanding the historic flight is 38-year-old billionaire Jared Isaacman, who took control of the Falcon 9 rocket as it took off as scheduled just after 8pm — carrying the Dragon capsule toward its three-day orbit 357 miles from Earth’s surface.
Isaacman is the third billionaire to launch this summer, following Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos in July.
Issacman and the three other civilians have been training together for six months.
They all come from a range of backgrounds and careers so we’ve rounded up some facts about each member people.
Hayley Arceneaux
Hayley Arceneaux is 29 years old and a physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the US.
She is the Hope seat and medical officer on the Inspiration4 mission and was specially chosen for the mission as an ambassador of St. Jude’s.
She survived bone cancer as a child and has a prosthetic in her leg.
This means she wouldn’t have qualified as a Nasa astronaut but is very excited to be flying with SpaceX.
Chris Sembroski
Chris Sembroski is a 41-year-old data engineer that currently works at Lockheed Martin.
He served in the US armed forces and maintained Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles and went to Iraq.
He is taking the Generosity seat on the Inspiration4 flight.
Sembroski’s friend actually won this seat after taking part in a fundraising campaign for St. Jude’s.
Sian Proctor
Sian Proctor is a 51-year-old geoscience professor at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona.
She’ll be the first person from Guam to reach space.
Proctor is in the Prosperity seat on Inspiration4 mission.
This seat could be won in a competition to set up an e-commerce shop on the Shift4Shop platform.
Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman is a 38-year-old billionaire and founder and CEO of Shift4Shop Payments.
He bought his seat on the flight and the other three for his crew mates.
He’s commanding the Inspiration4 flight, having garnered 6,000 hours of experience flying aircraft.
Isaacman is hoping to use the flight to raise $200 million to fight childhood cancer at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
He’s already donated $100 million.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
