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"The privately chartered flight will be commanded, funded and led by 38-year-old billionaire Jared Isaacman, and aim to support St Jude Children's Research Hosp

"The privately chartered flight will be commanded, funded and led by 38-year-old billionaire Jared Isaacman, and aim to support St Jude Children's Research Hospital." Um. Wow. Lots odd there. How can a charted flight be "commanded"? Are they renting the spacecraft or chartering a flight? How does this support the hospital? Is this a stunt to gather donations? I applaud billionaires who do cool stuff. I say have fun. But I don't feel any urge to send money. Now if he did something dangerous and/or humiliating in the style of Comic Relief, then I'd think about donating. How much of my [brother's] netflix subscription is paying for this flight? Richard Branson driving a Ferrari while asking for money? No. Richard Branson ice bucket challenge ever hour until the hospital gets a new MRI machine? Sign me up.

_Microft 5y ago
From what I remember a donation to the hospital made you enter the pool from which a winner for a seat on the flight was drawn. The planned spaceflight is called "Inspiration 4" and has a Wikipedia entry already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspiration4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspiration4
- sandworm101 5y ago
  Ah, that flight. It is a purchased flight. My understanding is that while they can throw the word "commander" and "pilot" around, that this will be a purely automated/ground-controlled exercise.
  - _Microft 5y ago
    Indeed, even though that has not been that different on the crew rotation flights to ISS. Doug Hurley (iirc - might have been Bob Behnken instead?) got to fly Crew Dragon manually during the first crewed mission "Demo 2" but the spacecraft is meant to bring people where they should be all by itself (and with help from ground control).
    - sandworm101 5y ago
      The ISS is a special case. That requires a pilot who can take manual control should the docking system go wrong. A stuck jet on approach could shatter the station and so you need someone who can take over and make very fast avoidance decisions. The recent incident with a docked module was a huge reminder of those dangers.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - TMWNN 5y ago
        >The ISS is a special case. That requires a pilot who can take manual control should the docking system go wrong. Yes, but the criteria for being that pilot has changed. Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur were Crew-2's commander and pilot. NASA hired both as mission specialists; neither would ever have been hired as shuttle pilots, as they don't have high-performance jet pilot experience (100% a requirement since NASA Astronaut Group 2) and neither went to test pilot school (not always a requirement, but pretty close to being so). I don't see any mention of fixed-wing flight experience in Kimbrough's NASA biography, something many mission specialists do have on their own. SpaceX has enough confidence in its systems to have people like Kimbrough and McArthur piloting spacecraft, which is a testament to their training and SpaceX's fly-by-wire systems. But the piloting they do is very simplified to what shuttle and previous NASA spacecraft required.
      - mr_toad 5y ago
        > That requires a pilot who can take manual control should the docking system go wrong. What would happen if something went wrong with a cargo Dragon? Clearly they don’t have or need someone on board to fly it.
decebalus1 5y ago
> But I don't feel any urge to send money. Billionaires publicly raising money via donations is just.. weird. They should just raise money among themselves during their eyes wide shut parties.
dotBen 5y ago
How can a charted flight be "commanded"? I looked into this previously, so Jared Isaacman not only is a billionaire from a payments gateway startup he founded, he also is the biggest private owner of military jets and owns a company that actually trains pilots for the USAF, USNavy and foreign airforces. He is a very accomplished pilot from what I gather. (He's 38 btw, so kudos to him) So, while the Dragon capsule is autonomous there is some 'commanding' that is needed to be able to fly the thing, especially if some of the autonomous features fail - he has been having astronaut training for that and such is 'commanding' the vessel. How does this support the hospital? He sold one of the tickets for a lot of money, I think it was to the guy who is listed as an Air Force vet but is actually a data scientist I believe. Look, he has to donate and generate a large chunk of cash to charity - it's fair optics, esp given the backlash Jeff Bezos had for not using his wealth philanthropically. Here the peanut gallery, we can't have it both ways either we pop at billionaires using their private wealth to go into space or we celebrate the ones who do something for a good cause..?
- beerandt 5y ago
  He bought a second ticket for a (former) St Jude patient who survived (to eventually become a nurse at St Jude). She'll be the "medical officer", which I'm not sure is a civilian title or crew one. Lots of "survivors can do anything" PR, plus there's an angle that space x is making space travel safe/common enough that you don't need to be medically perfect to qualify (she still has some sort of prosthesis from her treatment). It's a pretty brilliant PR campaign all around. She'll also become the youngest person ever to fly to space. ETA: Haley Arceneaux
trothamel 5y ago
There are at least a few manual decisions that could need to be made on the dragon, in addition to the buttons here: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=46136.msg1897620#msg1897620 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=46136.msg1... Of the four people on the craft, one of them has to have control if the "deorbit now" button is pressed - that would be the commander. (I suspect there will also be at least some other commands they can do, like changing the orientation of the spacecraft.)

_Microft 5y ago

From what I remember a donation to the hospital made you enter the pool from which a winner for a seat on the flight was drawn. The planned spaceflight is called "Inspiration 4" and has a Wikipedia entry already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspiration4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspiration4

sandworm101 5y ago
Ah, that flight. It is a purchased flight. My understanding is that while they can throw the word "commander" and "pilot" around, that this will be a purely automated/ground-controlled exercise.
- _Microft 5y ago
  Indeed, even though that has not been that different on the crew rotation flights to ISS. Doug Hurley (iirc - might have been Bob Behnken instead?) got to fly Crew Dragon manually during the first crewed mission "Demo 2" but the spacecraft is meant to bring people where they should be all by itself (and with help from ground control).
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    The ISS is a special case. That requires a pilot who can take manual control should the docking system go wrong. A stuck jet on approach could shatter the station and so you need someone who can take over and make very fast avoidance decisions. The recent incident with a docked module was a huge reminder of those dangers.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - TMWNN 5y ago
      >The ISS is a special case. That requires a pilot who can take manual control should the docking system go wrong. Yes, but the criteria for being that pilot has changed. Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur were Crew-2's commander and pilot. NASA hired both as mission specialists; neither would ever have been hired as shuttle pilots, as they don't have high-performance jet pilot experience (100% a requirement since NASA Astronaut Group 2) and neither went to test pilot school (not always a requirement, but pretty close to being so). I don't see any mention of fixed-wing flight experience in Kimbrough's NASA biography, something many mission specialists do have on their own. SpaceX has enough confidence in its systems to have people like Kimbrough and McArthur piloting spacecraft, which is a testament to their training and SpaceX's fly-by-wire systems. But the piloting they do is very simplified to what shuttle and previous NASA spacecraft required.
    - mr_toad 5y ago
      > That requires a pilot who can take manual control should the docking system go wrong. What would happen if something went wrong with a cargo Dragon? Clearly they don’t have or need someone on board to fly it.

decebalus1 5y ago

> But I don't feel any urge to send money. Billionaires publicly raising money via donations is just.. weird. They should just raise money among themselves during their eyes wide shut parties.

dotBen 5y ago

How can a charted flight be "commanded"? I looked into this previously, so Jared Isaacman not only is a billionaire from a payments gateway startup he founded, he also is the biggest private owner of military jets and owns a company that actually trains pilots for the USAF, USNavy and foreign airforces. He is a very accomplished pilot from what I gather. (He's 38 btw, so kudos to him) So, while the Dragon capsule is autonomous there is some 'commanding' that is needed to be able to fly the thing, especially if some of the autonomous features fail - he has been having astronaut training for that and such is 'commanding' the vessel. How does this support the hospital? He sold one of the tickets for a lot of money, I think it was to the guy who is listed as an Air Force vet but is actually a data scientist I believe. Look, he has to donate and generate a large chunk of cash to charity - it's fair optics, esp given the backlash Jeff Bezos had for not using his wealth philanthropically. Here the peanut gallery, we can't have it both ways either we pop at billionaires using their private wealth to go into space or we celebrate the ones who do something for a good cause..?

beerandt 5y ago
He bought a second ticket for a (former) St Jude patient who survived (to eventually become a nurse at St Jude). She'll be the "medical officer", which I'm not sure is a civilian title or crew one. Lots of "survivors can do anything" PR, plus there's an angle that space x is making space travel safe/common enough that you don't need to be medically perfect to qualify (she still has some sort of prosthesis from her treatment). It's a pretty brilliant PR campaign all around. She'll also become the youngest person ever to fly to space. ETA: Haley Arceneaux

trothamel 5y ago

There are at least a few manual decisions that could need to be made on the dragon, in addition to the buttons here: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=46136.msg1897620#msg1897620 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=46136.msg1... Of the four people on the craft, one of them has to have control if the "deorbit now" button is pressed - that would be the commander. (I suspect there will also be at least some other commands they can do, like changing the orientation of the spacecraft.)