A $1-a-ticket charity fundraising raffle launched by a billionaire aviator is offering the chance to win a hat, a T-shirt — or a seat on the first all-civilian space mission.
SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission will take four people, one of them a former cancer patient, on an orbital odyssey. It will be led and bankrolled by Jared Isaacman, a jet pilot and corporate founder with a $2 billion fortune but no formal training as an astronaut.
“Inspiration4 is the realisation of a lifelong dream and a step towards a future in which anyone can venture out and explore the stars,” said Isaacman, 37, who has donated $100 million to charity in honour of the mission. He aims to raise at least $100 million more by raffling off one of the seats.
“I appreciate the tremendous responsibility that comes with commanding this mission and I want to use this historic moment to inspire humanity while helping to tackle childhood cancer here on Earth,” he said.
The mission aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule is planned to last up to four days. Its launch could take place this year, though it may be pushed into 2022. It will be launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The raffle will raise funds for St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, which provides free treatment for young cancer patients and funds accommodation, travel and food for their families, in addition to backing cancer research.
Isaacman founded Shift4 Payments — an ecommerce platform — at the age of 16 and in 2011 co-founded Draken International, which trains pilots for the US military. He is qualified in flying commercial and military aircraft, holds aviation records and is part of an acrobatic jet display team.
He has paid to charter the Crew Dragon and is donating the three other seats. One will go to a “St Jude ambassador”, a woman who had cancer and now works at the hospital, and another will be raffled in aid of the hospital for a suggested $1 donation per ticket, although anyone can also enter without charge.
The fourth place will be assigned through a separate competition in which entrepreneurs are invited to start a small business via Shift4 Payments and make inspirational videos that will be judged by a celebrity panel.
Crew members must be physically and psychologically fit and will carry out “inspiring projects” in the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit, according to SpaceX.
The mission was announced less than a week after Axiom Space, a company founded by former Nasa astronauts, named the four-strong crew of Ax-1, the first all-private mission to the International Space Station. The Axiom mission, due for launch next year — also on a Crew Dragon — will be led by Michael López-Alegría, a former US navy pilot and retired Nasa astronaut.
In a separate endeavour off the coast of Texas last night, Elon Musk’s SpaceX conducted its second high-altitude test-flight of Starship, a prototype that it hopes to one day fly to Mars. The rocket flew successfully, appearing to reach its planned altitude of 10km in a test of its engines and manoeuvrability. However, hopes of landing it upright at the end of the test were dashed as it crashed in a fireball – the second Starship in two months to do so.
