This is the juicy part of the whole announcement: "the crew of Polaris Dawn will conduct a spacewalk". That's going to be a major feat and important milestone for Starship (and Dragon until then, of course).
"Polaris, a constellation of three stars more commonly known as the North Star...". Nope. It is a triple star system, something completely different.
Led by Jared Isaacman, CEO of Shift4, who last year was part of Inspiration4 mission.<p>I'm super confused how this programme works. Does Jared want to fund all these missions? If not, what is the "team's" contribution here?
Funfact: Anna Menon's husband, Anil Menon, was recently selected in the NASA space corps. It would be fun to see if Anna Menon ends up flying before Anil Menon.<p>Would they be the first couple where both partners went to space?
Alternative title: Billionaire buys himself three new space missions.<p>This is obviously great for SpaceX, as Jared Isaacman will be helping to finance SpaceX's development without (as I understand it) any long term stake in the company.<p>The "Launching Soon" label for the Starship mission is optimistic, seeing as Starship hasn't yet reached anywhere near space but Isaacman now gets a front row seat to it's development. There are worse ways to spend your money (but arguably also better ways).
I really zoned out of the Inspiration4 mission, mainly because it's branding was "space for all" when in reality it was (and always will be) ITAR restricted, so <i>for all</i> really meant <i>for Americans</i>.<p>The Polaris missions here don't seem to promise that, so feels more genuine already
With a name like 'Polaris' you'd think they would try a polar orbit. AFAIK no crewed missions have ever done that. Would be cool to see.
It's amusing to see that Elon Musk still hasn't admitted that the Starship program won't ever achieve the Mars mission he keeps touting (especially the original proposal of having the single ship take around a hundred human beings into orbit and then refuel and go to Mars in such a tiny vessel). At least someone is getting some use out of the vehicle and hopefully Musk will stop trying to bully his engineers too and let them do good work on the vehicle earth orbit deployments.
This will mark a huge developmental milestone of privately funded human space flight. I don't doubt that NASA's bureaucracy slows down human spaceflight progress - but hopefully this project sticks the safety protocol. I would strongly prefer to fly on the 10th flight of starship over the first flight of Artemis.
<a href="https://polarisprogram.com/polaris-program-will-undertake-a-series-of-pioneering-spacex-dragon-missions-demonstrating-new-technologies-and-culminating-in-the-first-human-spaceflight-on-starship/" rel="nofollow">https://polarisprogram.com/polaris-program-will-undertake-a-...</a><p>I can't tell if this is fundraising or straight up bragging. "We raised $240 million for St Jude Children's Hospital" ... by spending <i>how much</i>? They're selling swag but that doesn't appear to have serious commercial or influence potential.
> The Polaris Program is a first-of-its-kind effort to rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities, while continuing to raise funds and awareness for important causes here on Earth<p>But if we're launching loads of people into space, what does the carbon footprint of that look like? How can you care for the earth if burnt rocket fuel is detrimental to the atmosphere?