Inspiration4 was the world’s first all-civilian orbital mission, sending a crew of four into the skies on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The privately funded commercial mission took place from September 16 to 18, 2021.
Inspiration4 used a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft called “Resilience,” commanded by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments. This name should sound familiar, as it is also the name of the upcoming Polaris Dawn Mission, the first in the three-flight Polaris program funded and led by Isaacman.
Isaacman booked four seats on Resilience. He took one of them, and Sian Proctor was selected to pilot the mission. Isaacman donated the other two seats to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis as part of a fundraising and awareness campaign. The hospital selected physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux for one seat and held a raffle for the other. The winner of the raffle gifted the seat to his longtime friend Chris Sembroski, filling the Inspiration4 Crew.
Look out the window
Space.com met Sembroski last month via video link at a pre-opening event for Home Beyond Earthan impressive and comprehensive new exhibition at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.
The exhibition focuses on space stations of the past, present and future. But Sembroski said he felt particularly at ease when he looked at a huge video wall that showed images of Earth seen from space.
Related: Facts about Inspiration4, the first purely civilian space flight with SpaceX Dragon
“I keep thinking about how much I want to go back to space,” Sembroski told Space.com. “I spent some time looking out the window at Earth.”
These views were particularly impressive on Inspiration4. The mission did not meet the International Space Stationso that the docking adapter, which is included as standard, Dragon Capsules were left behind on Earth. Instead, Resilience was fitted with a curved Plexiglas window that gave the crew unprecedented views of Earth – and a particularly strong dose of Overview effect.
“Even though I felt physically disconnected from Earth, I felt more drawn to our planet than ever before,” Sembroski said. “Seeing Earth in this way is a great introduction to the beginning of an entire novel. It should start with, ‘Welcome to Earth. These are all the amazing, incredible places on this planet. Now go and be in the midst of them and build a closer connection to them.'”
Sembroski said his goal after the mission is to visit what he has seen of our home planet from his unique place in space. “I really want to see the Andes, the incredible deserts, mountains and seascapes. I need to go into the interior of Australia and visit the great coral reefs down there.”
Medical examination
Inspiration4 also studied the effects of spaceflight on the human body. The crew collected biosamples before, during and after their flight. They also measured physiological and stress responses, as well as neurovestibular changes during their orbit around the Earth.
The result of this medical examination was published in the journal Nature last month. These results and data sets have been made available as a resource for further biomedical and space studies.
“We were test subjects for all scientific and medical experiments that were conducted on our flight,” said Sembroski. “The unique thing is that everyone has the chance to get to know me better than I know myself. All extracted medical data will be transferred to a publicly accessible database – the first of its kind.”
But Sembroski wasn’t just conducting biomedical tests and looking out the window; he had other tasks on his to-do list.
“I had the title of mission specialist. I was responsible for balancing and cargo management (of the spacecraft) and its center for Heavy for re-entry,” he said. “I communicated where things were … very important. I was also the waiter and served all the meals.”
Do justice to history
Sembroski was more than ready to accept his space assignment; in some ways, he had been preparing for it most of his life. “My brother collected baseball cards (as a kid). I collected glossy 8×10 photos of astronauts,” he said.
Sembroski said he was filled with awe throughout the mission. But he was also aware The risksbased on his experience as a tour guide at NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“My challenge was to convey to my wife and family how things had changed. I told them that there are not so many things to worry about anymore. It is much safer than even the shuttle was. My wife had all the fears,” he explained.
The opportunity afforded to the Inspiration4 crew “means they have complete confidence in the capabilities of the spacecraft,” Sembroski said. “The only concern was figuring out how I’m going to do justice to history. Why am I sitting in this particular seat after all these people have launched from the same launch pad… even at the moon!”
Related: SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission opened a new era of private space travel
Share the experience
Sembroski still has one foot in the final frontier; he is now an avionics engineer at Blue Originthe aerospace company of Jeff Bezos.
“I work on the equipment inside the New Glenn “We’re in the process of building the rocket and getting it ready for flight this year,” Sembroski said. “There are so many new things that we’re going to introduce at Blue Origin that we’ve been working on in the background for a long time.”
Sembroski is also an adjunct professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He is always happy to share his personal experiences beyond Earth with students and the public. In fact, Sembroski said he will be heading to Space Camp at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, later this summer to detail his adventure.
“The spacesuit I wore in Dragon is on permanent display there,” Sembroski concluded. “I’ll go there myself.”
