Inspiration 4

**Yazata** · (This post was last modified: Sep 15, 2021 04:29 AM by Yazata.)

A rich guy has hired a Crew Dragon and is flying himself and three other people that he selected on a 3-day orbital flight. It's an interesting group of people. Space adventurers.

It's the first entirely non-nasa orbital crewed spaceflight ever flown from the United States. First non-government crewed orbital spaceflight anywhere.

The idea with Commercial Crew was that nasa would end up being just one customer of many.

Set to launch tomorrow at 8:02 pm EDT, 5:02 PM PDT and 00:02 Thursday morning UTC.

Booster is B1062 on its third mission. The two previous were GPS satellites for the Space Force. Recovery will be on JRTI. Capsule will be Resilience on its second human spaceflight, having previously flown Crew-1.

A major Crew Dragon modification for this flight was removal of the Space Station docking port and its replacement with a big transparent viewing dome.

[Image: spacex-crew-dragon-window-dome-1280x720-1-768x432.jpeg]

https://inspiration4.com/

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/3pv01sSq44w

**confused2**

I have to get this in before (I sincerely hope) I see it:
The ex chemo patient, now cancer doctor, wants to show off her floof hair in space.

Correction: Hayley Arceneaux is a physician assistant at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital - not a doctor.

**Yazata** · (This post was last modified: Sep 16, 2021 04:06 AM by Yazata.)

Good launch, Inspiration 4 astronauts are in orbit.

And B 1062 nailed its third landing, on JRTI out in the Atlantic.

Inspiration 4 photo

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**Yazata** · (This post was last modified: Sep 18, 2021 04:30 AM by Yazata.)

Predictably, the transparent viewing dome is popular.

The capsule conducted a couple of burns to prepare itself for reentry. The capsule flies itself autonomously and doesn't need to be piloted from onboard.

Return and splashdown will be Saturday afternoon, US time

I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed about how secretive the whole thing has been. Almost no onboard video and just a few photos (below). Apparently, it's because the video rights were sold to netflix, who are doing a documentary. Say what you want about government nasa flights, they let you listen in on communications with the capsules, show lots of video and keep the space-nuts and interested public in the loop. I agree with Gizmodo

https://gizmodo.com/spacex-s-surprisingl...1847695787

[Image: E_dZJNZWEAAKc2H?format=png&name=900x900]

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**Yazata** · Sep 18, 2021 03:41 PM

Splashdown will be 7:06 PM EDT, 23:06 UTC and 4:06 PDT

It should be streamed by SpaceX here

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/dpFKNNl47AM

**Yazata** · (This post was last modified: Sep 19, 2021 01:05 AM by Yazata.)

Inspiration 4 has reentered and splashed down in the Atlantic, not far from Cape Canaveral. Crew are safe and in good spirits.

**Yazata** · (This post was last modified: Sep 20, 2021 04:14 AM by Yazata.)

Haley and Jared (you can tell by their hair) in the viewing dome looking at Earth. Photo from an external camera mounted on the capsule. You can see that the dome has two layers, probably for safety and maybe thermal reasons. This is the largest window ever flown in space.

(SpaceX photos)

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Haley after she emerged from the toasty capsule aboard SpaceX's recovery ship. (The damage to the capsule is just superficial and it can be renovated/repainted and reflown. This is this capsule's second flight.)

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**Yazata** · (This post was last modified: Sep 21, 2021 06:56 AM by Yazata.)

Just noticed that Elon got in this zinger.

Somebody asked

"The President of the United States has refused to even acknowledge the 4 newest American astronauts who helped raise hundreds of millions of Dollars for St. Jude. What's your theory on why that is?"

Elon:

"He's still sleeping."

Ouch!

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1439665626914635783

More

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/19/elon-mus...ssion.html

In more Elon/Inspiration news, it seems that the fundraising goal for St. Judes Children's Research Hospital was $200 million. When the flight splashed down on Saturday they were at $160 million in donations. So Elon donated an additional $50 million of his own money to take them to $210 million.