These civilians may not be billionaires like Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson, but they had the rare chance to go to space courtesy of a recent mission conducted by SpaceX.
The mission, called Inspiration4, had four non-austronaut crew aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft that was lifted off by a Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"Few have come before, and many are about to follow. The door is now open, and it's pretty incredible," Inspiration4 Commander Jared Issacman said.
A 38-year-old billionaire, Isaacman is an experienced pilot. He is the founder of Shift4 Payments, a payment processing company, and bought all four seats on the flight for around $220 million.
Before the historic mission, forecasters at the U.S. Space Force's 45th Weather Squadron has predicted an 80% chance of favorable weather on the day of the liftoff and, they were right.
Isaacman announced this ambitious mission 10 months ago. Space flights are hardly a news anymore, but one thing that made the space mission momentous is the fact that it wouldn't involve astronauts.
When he first disclosed the mission, he said that it would only carry private citizens, which is a bold statement since a space mission is a complex and risky task.
LIFTOFF: SpaceX launches first all-civilian flight to Earth's orbit. https://t.co/Ur7U0Sb6Dy pic.twitter.com/af8cazVIic — ABC News (@ABC) September 16, 2021
Also, to make the mission "worthwhile" and set it apart from Bezos' and Branson's space endeavors, Isaacman said their mission aims to raise money and awareness for the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, to whom he has already donated $100 million.
Isaacman purchased a flight on the Dragon to inspire future space visitors and raise money for the hospital's cancer research.
The first seat had gone to Hayley Arceanaux, a frontline worker and cancer survivor patientat St. Jude. She, too, will make history by being the youngest American to fly in space and the first space visitor with a prosthesis.
The second auctioned seat has raised $13 million, which, according to Issacman, would go St. Jude alone. The seat auction created a lot of hype because it was even advertised in the recent Super Bowl.
Chris Sembroski would be taking the second seat, and what's interesting here is that he wasn't actually the real winner of the bidding. The seat was graciously given to him by his friends.
Sian Proctor, a geoscientist and a professor at Southern Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona, got the third seat.
On Twitter, SpaceX said just before 11 p.m. that the crew had reached 535 kilometers into orbit, or around 363 miles -- the farthest any civilian has traveled from Earth.
The distance is even farther than the International Space Station (ISS), which is around 240 miles in orbit.
After three days circling Earth, the Dragon crew will brace themselves for a hair-raising splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean off Florida's coast Saturday or Sunday.
