SpaceX Pilot Sian Proctor Talks About Her Journey—and Returning to Earth

Sian Proctor’s journey to space began in 1970, when she was born to a father who worked at a NASA tracking station during the Apollo program. She grew up in a home filled with NASA memorabilia and dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot so she could later be an astronaut.

That dream was derailed a couple of times. First, when she discovered in her teens that she needed eyeglasses. So, instead of joining the Air Force, she became a geology professor. Then, in 2009, though she was a finalist in the competition, she was turned down for NASA’s astronaut training program.

Finally, in September, Dr. Proctor piloted SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission as part of the first all-civilian crew to orbit the Earth.

She says she wasn’t scared as she listened to the countdown. Her fear, she says, has always been that the moment would not come, or that it would somehow slip away.

“When we got down to one minute,” she says, “I was like, ‘All right, we’re doing this. Let’s go.’ ”

The Wall Street Journal spoke to Dr. Proctor about her journey and about why she thinks solving challenges in human space travel can help humanity overcome problems here on Earth. Below are edited excerpts.

WSJ: Did you bring any trinkets in your pocket to sell or give to family and friends?

DR. PROCTOR: Oh, my goodness, yes. I brought a lot of things. I tried to bring as many people on this journey with me as possible. I brought 32 pieces of student artwork from my school. I brought poetry, which was digital. I also I brought my “Star Wars” trading cards that I got when I was 13 years old. Those days as a kid really made me fall in love with not only science fiction, but the dream of being an astronaut.

WSJ: Why do you think private space tourism is important?

DR. PROCTOR: Access to new technology and new experiences is important. When we push people out of their comfort zone, that’s when you learn the most, that’s when you grow. And so you think: How do we give people experiences that fundamentally change them for the better, where they get a new perspective and love of our planet. It’s not about space exploration in itself, it’s about solving for space solves for Earth.

The Inspiration4 crew—from left, Chris Sembroski, Dr. Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux—at Kennedy Space Center in Florida before the launch.

Photo: SpaceX/Zuma Press

WSJ: What has been solved for Earth with the money spent on private missions like this?

DR. PROCTOR: When I say that, I’m talking about the advancement of human space flight in general. The reality is every dollar spent on human space exploration is spent here with jobs. And then when we’re talking about efficiency, you’re talking about technology.

Space flight is fundamentally about efficiency in water, energy, shelter, food. Everything that we need to survive and thrive in space—on the moon and Mars—are the things that we need to survive here on Earth. And when we talk about the wicked problems here on Earth, guess what they are: food, energy, water, shelter, waste management, they’re all the same things. Space enables us to become more efficient. You have to. And that efficiency technology makes us more efficient here on Earth.

WSJ: Do you think that space travel is important because the Earth may one day become uninhabitable?

DR. PROCTOR: No. I think that solving for spacesolves for Earth, right down to us being able to stay on Earth until something beyond our control happens, like, you know, our sun expands, which is a long, long, long, long, long time away. Everything has a finite life. Our planet does have a finite life. And if humanity is going to survive, we will have to become Earth seed and go out and populate in order for humanity to live on. But we’re talking millions and billions of years from now.

WSJ: I have to ask, does the weightlessness in space feel at all like the sensation of being in an elevator going down?

DR. PROCTOR: Nope. There is a little sense of that when you free fall. We did a zero G flight, so you get it for that moment. But it’s that sustained, maintaining of zero gravity that really trips your brain, because you’re like: OK, this isn’t stopping. Now I have to manage being in this new fluidity of movement. And the orientation doesn’t matter. And that’s just incredible.

The most surprising thing for me was—it’s starting to slip away now—for the first two to three weeks afterwards, my dreams were filled with me floating. I think my brain was trying to process.