Everett man returns safely to Earth after 3-day space orbit

By Marcia Dunn / Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – Four space tourists, including a man from Everett, safely completed their groundbreaking orbit on Saturday with a splash in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida.

Her SpaceX capsule parachuted into the sea just before sunset, not far from where her charter flight began three days earlier.

The all-amateur crew was the first to circumnavigate the world without a professional astronaut.

The billionaire who paid millions for the trip and his three guests wanted to show that ordinary people can shoot themselves into orbit, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk welcomed them as the company’s first rocket-driving tourists.

“Your mission has shown the world that space is there for all of us,” radioed SpaceX Mission Control.

“It’s been a hell of a ride for us … just getting started,” replied travel sponsor Jared Isaacman, referring to the growing number of private flights on the horizon.

SpaceX’s fully automated Dragon capsule reached an unusually high altitude of 363 miles after launch on Wednesday night. Passengers outstripped the International Space Station by 100 miles and enjoyed the view of Earth through a large bubble-shaped window attached to the top of the capsule.

The four returned through the atmosphere early Saturday night, the first space travelers to complete their flight in the Atlantic since Apollo 9 in 1969. SpaceX’s previous two crew splashes – with astronauts for NASA – were in the Gulf of Mexico.

Within a few minutes, two SpaceX boats drove alongside the rocking capsule. When the capsule hatch was opened on the salvage ship, medical worker Hayley Arceneaux was the first to come out with a big smile and a thumbs up.

Everyone seemed fine and happy.

In this image from a SpaceX video, passengers aboard a SpaceX capsule react as the capsule parachuted into the Atlantic off the coast of Florida on Saturday. (SpaceX via AP)

Their families waited near the launch site on Wednesday evening from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

This time around, NASA was little more than an encouraging spectator, their only link being the Kennedy launch pad, which was once used for the Apollo moon shots and shuttle crews but is now rented from SpaceX.

Isaacman, 38, an entrepreneur and accomplished pilot, wanted to raise $ 200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He donated $ 100 million himself and raffled one of the four seats. Late on Saturday, Musk tweeted that he was donating $ 50 million, which she overdid.

For the final seat, Isaacman ran a competition for customers of his payment processing company Shift4 Payments in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

On the flight with him were Arceneaux, 29, a St. Jude medical assistant who was treated for bone cancer at the Memphis, Tennessee Hospital nearly two decades ago, and contest winners Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, and Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator, scientist, and artist from Tempe, Arizona.

In this image from a video, Chris Sembroski, one of four passengers aboard the SpaceX capsule, reacts after emerging from the capsule Saturday after it was recovered off the coast of Florida after it dumped in the Atlantic. (Inspiration4 via AP)

Sembroski, a former Air Force rocket engineer who moved to Everett in 2007, is a home-based reliability engineer at Lockheed Martin. He entered an open lottery by donating to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He didn’t win, but a college friend won and gave him the slot. He is married to Erin Duncan-Sembroski, an English teacher at Explorer Middle School south of Everett, and the couple have two girls.

“Best ride of my life!” Proctor tweeted a few hours after the splashdown.

Strangers through March, the four spent six months training in-flight and preparing for potential emergencies – but there was no need to intervene, officials said upon their return. During the trip called Inspiration4, they had time to chat with St. Jude patients, perform medical tests on themselves, ring the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange, and draw something and play the ukulele.

Arceneaux, the youngest American in space and the first to have a prosthesis, reassured her patients, “I was a little girl who, like many of you, had cancer treatment and if I can do it, you can.”

They also took calls from Tom Cruise, who was interested in his own SpaceX flight to the space station to film, and the rock band U2’s Bono.

Their space menu wasn’t typical either: cold pizza and sandwiches, but also pasta Bolognese and Mediterranean lamb.

Before the descent, Sembroski was so calm that he was seen in the capsule while watching Mel Brooks’ film “Spaceballs” on his tablet in 1987.

“What an incredible adventure!” he later tweeted.

Congratulations, also from the Association of Space Explorers, to their four newest members.

Aside from issues with a toilet fan and a defective temperature sensor in an engine, the flight went exceptionally well, officials said. Some of the four passengers suffered from motion sickness when they reached orbit – as did some astronauts.

“It was a very clean mission from start to finish,” said Benji Reed, SpaceX senior director.

Reed expects SpaceX to take up to six private flights a year between astronaut launches for NASA. Four SpaceX flights have already been booked to bring paying customers accompanied by former NASA astronauts to the space station. The first is slated for early next year with three business people paying $ 55 million apiece. Russia also plans to hire an actor and film director to film the film next month, and a Japanese tycoon in December.

Customers interested in fast space travel should turn to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The two took their own rockets to the edge of space in July to boost ticket sales; their flights lasted 10 to 15 minutes.

The 60-year scorecard now stands at 591 people who have reached space or its fringes – and is expected to skyrocket as space tourism heats up.

gallery

In this image from a SpaceX video, passengers aboard a SpaceX capsule react as the capsule parachuted into the Atlantic off the coast of Florida on Saturday. (SpaceX via AP)