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Into The Heavens: SpaceX Gears up for Historic Inspiration4 Civilian Space Launch

If you’ve always dreamed of one day climbing aboard a rocket and blasting off into the great beyond that is outer space, your dreams are no longer out of the realm of possibility. Elon Musk’s SpaceX team is preparing to launch Inspiration4, the world’s first all civilian mission to low earth orbit.
Inspiration 4 14 photos
Photo: Space X
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Make no mistake, these average civilians had to endure nearly all of the same training a normal astronaut receives. But rest assures, these men and women are not test pilots, military personnel, or astronauts. They’re normal everyday men and women, and that opens up a world of possibilities.

The mission will be commanded by Jared Isaacman, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Shift4 Payments and a seasoned pilot. The launch will take place at the iconic Launch Complex 39A, the launchpad for the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions, and mark the start of a multiple-day trip around the Earth. This would best Jeff Bezos’ and Richard Branson's missions, which only spent minutes in space, by several orders of magnitude.

The Inspiration4 mission will consist of much of SpaceX’s arsenal of state-of-the-art infrastructure like the Falcon 9 medium launch vehicle and the Dragon Space Capsule. The launch payload mass of the mission is estimated at around 6,000 kilograms (13,228 pounds).

The SpaceX Dragon Capsule will travel at over 17,000 miles per hour (27,360 kph), or about 22 times the speed of sound as it completes an orbital path that crosses as much as 90% of the global population.

If all goes well, Inspiration4 could usher in a new age of space travel. One which is open for all of humanity to explore. In this way, perhaps only Neal Armstrong's Apollo 11 lunar landing will be more significant to the history of spaceflight. Be sure to catch the launch on Netflix and other internet streaming services like Youtube (attached below).

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