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Launch of a SpaceX program rocket (May 2020)
Photo: JOE SKIPPER / REUTERS
A 37-year-old US billionaire costs a lot to fulfill a childhood dream.
Jared Isaacman has booked a space flight with the private space company SpaceX - and he says he wants to allocate the remaining three places for a good cause.
The mission entitled "Inspiration4" should start this year, SpaceX announced on Monday.
In the past, however, the company repeatedly failed to meet deadlines it had set itself.
It would be the first mission where none of the participants are a professional astronaut employed by a space agency.
The billionaire who made his money with the payment processing company Shift4 Payments has reserved a seat for himself on the space flight on board the »Crew Dragon«.
He wants to award the other three through various selection processes and in doing so raise money for the St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
"I've been a space fan since kindergarten," Isaacman was quoted as saying.
He didn't want to say how much money he will pay for the three or four day space flight.
Last week it became known that four men from the USA, Canada and Israel should fly to the International Space Station as space tourists in the coming year at the earliest.
The US entrepreneur Larry Connor, the Israeli businessman and pilot Eytan Stibbe and the Canadian investor Mark Pathy were selected for the "Ax-1" mission, which the company Axiom Space is organizing together with the US space agency NASA and SpaceX.
Former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria is to become the mission's commander.
According to media reports, the ticket for this mission will cost around $ 55 million (about 45 million euros).
Historic flight at the end of last year
In mid-November, the "Crew Dragon" was on a regular mission in space for the first time.
The launch came half a year after the historic maiden flight of the spacecraft.
The »Crew Dragon« started at the tip of a »Falcon 9« rocket, the first stage of which returned to earth as planned after a few minutes and landed on a floating platform - a great success for SpaceX.
The capsule docked at the International Space Station ISS after more than 27 hours of flight.
It was the first time, after a break of almost nine years, that astronauts had returned to orbit from American soil - and the first time that they had been promoted by a private space company.
SpaceX had previously only transported cargo to the ISS.
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jok / dpa
