The four crew members of the Inspiration4 mission are safely back on Earth, where countless other space tourists are eager to follow suit.

After three days of orbiting our planet, the Crew Dragon spacecraft, containing the Inspiration4 crew, has plunged back to Earth. The four space tourists plunged safely into the water off the coast of the US state of Florida, where they were picked up by boats. With the splash in the water, the first fully civilian space flight has come to an end. But it certainly won’t be the last.

Multi-day mission

The mission, which has been dubbed Inspiration4, was an exciting one. It was the world’s first all-citizen spaceflight to orbit around the Earth. Wealthy businessman, veteran pilot and adventurer Jared Isaacman, assistant physician to St. Jude Children’s Hospital Hayley Arceneaux, Air Force veteran and data engineer Chris Sembroski, and scientist, entrepreneur and pilot Sian Proctor boarded SpaceX’ Crew Dragon on September 15 and flew to an altitude of 575 kilometers. After a multi-day journey and an unprecedented experience richer, the Crew Dragon set sail again on September 18th. Dangling from four parachutes, the craft then landed safe and sound in the water.

The mission was not just intended as a fun outing. For example, the Inspiration4 mission was completely devoted to the fight against childhood cancer and the crew wanted to make an important contribution to be able to cure this disease on earth. In the end, the crew of four raised nearly $154 million for St. Jude Children’s Hospital.

Firsts
The mission was also one of firsts. Not only was it the first fully civilian human spaceflight to orbit, it was also the farthest manned flight since the Hubble missions. In addition, it was the first time that all three Dragons from SpaceX operated in space simultaneously and it was also the first time that someone flew into space with a prosthesis.

Prelude to more

While the first fully civilian spaceflight is now over, we probably won’t have long to wait for the next one. At the beginning of October, two civilians – actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko – will again fly to the ISS to shoot scenes for a Russian film. The two civilians will dash aboard the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft to the space station, where it will be rotated for the first time.

With Axiom Space to the ISS
Incidentally, the Russians are not the only ones who want to go to the ISS with civilians. Space travel agency Axiom Space intends to go to the ISS early next year with four vacationing space tourists. The vacationers will be transported to the ISS aboard SpaceX’ Crew Dragon, where they will stay for eight days before returning to Earth. The space tourists are said to pay a whopping $55 million for their eight-day trip.

dearMoon

But SpaceX itself will not stop at one civilian mission either. In fact, the next civilian-manned mission will go one step further. In 2023, the space company wants to go to the moon with citizens. During this mission – dubbed dearMoon – nine people will circle our natural satellite.

Space tourism on the rise

So there are plenty of wild plans. It therefore seems that the space is slowly but surely being opened up to ‘the simple soul’. Space companies such as SpaceX, but also Boeing have been able to invest heavily in the development of spaceships and rockets in recent years – partly thanks to contracts with NASA that were supposed to make the launch of American astronauts from American soil possible again. And space tourism is visibly benefiting from that.

A new era in which space is becoming more and more accessible to everyone seems to have arrived. Because the time when the universe was only the domain of governmental space organizations and their astronauts seems to be over. However, a trip to space will unfortunately only be reserved for the very rich, or very, very lucky ones in the near future.