Unlike the trips of Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, SpaceX’s passengers have gone all the way to orbit
REALITY TELEVISION loves small, enclosed worlds; space travel requires them. That these two facts would, some day, come together has long seemed inevitable. The launch of four civilian astronauts from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the early hours of September 16th sealed the deal. It is normal, these days, for space launches to be streamed on the YouTube channel of the space agencies and companies involved.
The trip is also far more ambitious. Rather than plopping straight back down to Earth a few minutes after crossing a largely arbitrary line in the upper atmosphere which defines “space”, as Sir Richard and Mr Bezos did, Mr Isaacman and his three companions have gone all the way to orbit, propelled by a SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher. Within hours their Dragon2 spacecraft had raised their orbital altitude to around 575km, some 150km higher than that of the International Space Station .
Though the quartet had been chosen before the show began—Mr Sembroski’s seat was won in a raffle to benefit St Jude; Dr Proctor’s in a competition run by Shift4—they are a telegenic bunch. That, along with the novelty of the situation they now find themselves in, may be enough to keep viewers entranced.
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