SpaceX launch: Here’s who’s onboard the first all-private ISS space tourism mission
The passengers on this trip — which includes former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegría, who will command the mission as an Axiom employee, and three paying customers — are slated to take off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday at 11:17 am ET. They’ll ride inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, the same capsule that SpaceX has used to carry NASA astronauts to the ISS already. The capsule rides to orbit on top of one of SpaceX’s 230-foot-tall Falcon 9 rockets.
This mission, called AX-1, will mark the first time in history that private citizens, or otherwise non-professional astronauts, will launch to the ISS from US soil. And it’s the first of what Axiom, the company that organized and brokered this mission with SpaceX, hopes will be many similar flights for anyone who can afford it.
The AX-1 mission is also only the second space tourism flight for SpaceX, following up the September 2021 launch of four private citizens on a three-day, freeflying trip through orbit that traveled even higher than the ISS.
During their eight-day stay on the space station, the AX-1 crew will conduct some science experiments, break bread with the professional astronauts already on board the football-field sized space station, and enjoy sweeping views of our home planet whisking by down below.
Who’s on this mission?
Axiom serves as an intermediary between paying customers who want to take a multimillion-dollar thrill ride to space, booking flights with SpaceX, handling negotiations with NASA, and taking over the training for the would-be space travelers. Axiom hopes to make these flights a regular occurrence, as NASA agreed a few years ago to open up the ISS to space tourism and other commercial ventures.
There are three paying customers on this flight. They are all wealthy white men, continuing a trend plaguing the commercial spaceflight sector and its inaccessibility to more diverse swaths of the population. The vast majority of people who have thus far been able to afford to pay their way to space — whether on SpaceX flights or suborbital missions like those offered by Blue Origin — have been white businessmen. It’s indicative of just how far the reality is from the promised far-off space dream that comes from entrepreneurs who claim that space is “for everyone” and commercializing space will “democratize it” amid ballooning income inequality. With price points this exuberant, space will remain commercially accessible only to the elite few for the foreseeable future. Though the aim is to eventually drastically reduce the cost of getting to space, hopefully making ticket prices affordable for more people, it’s not clear how or when that will happen.
Real estate tycoon Larry Connor
Larry Connor, 72, is a real estate tycoon from Dayton, Ohio. He founded The Connor Group, which has developments in 16 markets across the country and has more than $3.5 billion in assets, according to the company’s website. He’s an avid adventurer, having raced cars and climbed mountains.
“My journey really started seven or eight years ago. I’ve always been interested in space, and I started thinking about after I read about an American who went to Russia and went on the Soyuz [spacecraft],” he said in an interview with the Dayton Society of Natural History last year, after his plans to fly on AX-1 were revealed.
Connor said he decided to book the mission for “the challenge.”
Former shipping CEO Mark Pathy
Mark Pathy, 52, is the founder and CEO of the Canadian investment firm and family office Mavrik Corp. It’s website states that Mavrik has a “particular focus on innovation,…
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