This was NOT a NASA or Defense Dept. mission….
But SpaceX HAS worked closely with NASA and uses US Air Force and Space Force assets for its missions…
It also does missions for the US Defense Dept and Intelligence Community….
The company is a Elton Musk controlled company …
The splashdown off the Florida coast was a successful end to a historic flight funded by the mission commander, Jared Isaacman, a 38-year-old billionaire entrepreneur and aviation enthusiast. Never before had a group of amateurs flown to orbit before. While NASA had overseen the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft that flew them to space, the agency was not directly involved in the mission….
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The Inspiration4 mission completed a series of historic firsts that were catalogued and released to reporters this evening by the mission’s public relations team. They include:
- First all-civilian human spaceflight to orbit
- First Black female spacecraft pilot
- Youngest American in orbit
- First person to fly to space with a prosthetic
- Farthest flight for a human spaceflight since the Hubble missions
- First time SpaceX has operated three Dragons in space
- First free-flight of a Dragon spacecraft on a human spaceflight mission. Previous Dragon missions had the International Space Station as destination.
- Largest contiguous window ever flown in space
- First splashdown of a Dragon crew in the Atlantic Ocean
- First thrice-flown Falcon 9 booster to launch a human spaceflight mission
Note…
Nobody goes into space in ‘Space Ships’ anymore after the retirement of the Space ‘Shuttle’
image….Handout/AFP/Getty