Created 16-Sep-21
Modified 13-Dec-23
Excerpts from Spaceflight Now - https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/09/16/four-private-citizens-ride-spacex-rocket-into-orbit-on-historic-mission/
A Falcon 9 rocket lit up Florida’s Space Coast with a roaring liftoff from pad 39A at Kennedy at 8:02:56 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0002:56 GMT Thursday). The launch kicked off SpaceX’s fourth-ever crew mission to low Earth orbit, but the first without any NASA astronauts on-board.
With the backing of a billionaire businessman, four private citizens blasted off Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a first-of-its-kind fully commercial three-day spaceflight aboard a SpaceX crew capsule, riding to an altitude higher than any person has flown in two decades.
The Inspiration4 mission includes a wealthy entrepreneur with a penchant for aerobatic flying, a science educator with a lifelong ambition to fly in space, a physician assistant who survived childhood cancer, and an Air Force veteran turned data engineer.
Photos taken from Space View Park, Titusville, some 12 miles away.
© Dennis Huff
