CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – A US billionaire who made his fortune in tech jets and a fighter is buying the entire SpaceX flight and plans to take three with him to orbit the globe this year.
In addition to fulfilling his dream of flying in space, Jared Isaacman announced Monday that he aims to use the private mission to raise $ 200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, half a coming from his own pockets.
A health care worker for St. Jude has already been selected for the mission. Anyone who makes a donation to St. Jude in February submits a random photo for No. 3 chair. The fourth seat goes to a business owner who uses Shift4 Payments, a Isaacman credit card processing company in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
“I really want to live in a world 50 or 100 years from now where people are jumping rockets like the Jetsons and families are kicking around the moon with their baby in it. the space suit, ”Isaacman, who turns 38 next week, has been told The Associated Press.
“I also think that if we are to live in that world, we will have a better impact on childhood cancer along the way. ”
He has purchased a Super Bowl ad to launch the mission, called Inspiration4 and is aiming for October. The mission in the SpaceX Dragon capsule is still being worked out, including the number of days the four will be in orbit after an explosion from Florida. The other passengers will be announced next month.
Isaacman’s tour is the latest private space travel announcement. Three businessmen are paying $ 55 million apiece for a flight to the International Space Station next January aboard the SpaceX Dragon. And a Japanese businessman is dealing with SpaceX to fly to the moon in a few years.
Isaacman would not disclose what SpaceX is paying for, except to say that the expected donation to St. Jude is “significantly higher than the cost of the mission. ”
While the former NASA astronaut will join the three businessmen, Isaacman will be his own spaceship commander. The appeal, he said, learns all about SpaceX’s Dragon and Falcon 9 rocket. While the capsules are designed to fly independently, a pilot can go overboard. system in crisis.
A “space geek” from kindergarten, Isaacman dropped out of high school when he was 16, earned a GED certification and started a business in his parents ’basement that became the genesis for Shift4. He set a world speed record in 2009 while raising money for the Make-A-Wish program, and later founded Draken International, the world’s largest private fleet. world of fighting jets.
Isaacman’s $ 100 million commitment to St. Jude in Memphis, Tennessee, is the largest ever by one person and one of the largest in general.
“We build ourselves every day,” said Rick Shadyac, president of St. Jude’s fundraising group.
In addition to SpaceX training, Isaacman plans to take his crew on a mountain trip to recount his most uncomfortable experience to date – tenting on the side of a mountain in the bitter winter weather.
“We’re all going to get to know each other … very well before it launches,” he said.
He is well aware that things have to go well.
“If something goes wrong, it will restore everyone else ‘s desire to go and be a commercial astronaut,” he said from his home in Easton, Pennsylvania.
Isaacman said he signed with the company Elon Musk because he is the clear leader in commercial space lighting, with two astronauts already completed. Boeing has yet to fly astronauts to the space station for NASA. While Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos ’Blue Origin plan to start flying customers later this year, their craft will just shower the surface of space.
Isaacman had been a space light payer for years. He traveled to Kazakhstan in 2008 to see the explosion of a Russian Soyuz with a tourist on board, then a few years later he went to one of NASA’s last space missions. SpaceX invited him to join the company’s second astronaut for NASA in November.
Although Isaacman and his wife, Monica, managed to keep his space trip hush-hush over the months, their daughters could not. The girls, ages 7 and 4, heard their parents talk about the flight last year and told their teachers, who asked to ask if the astronaut was a real father.
“My wife said, ‘No, of course not, you know how those kids make up things. ‘But I mean the fact that my kids weren’t that far off with that one. “
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The Department of Health and Science Associated Press is supported by the Science Education Department of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.