The Polaris Dawn spaceflight was more than just a billionaire’s pleasure trip

A white spacecraft, lightly toasted like a marshmallow and giving off the smell of burnt metal, flew out of the sky Sunday morning and landed in the Gulf of Mexico not far from Key West.

The dark waters there were carefully chosen from dozens of potential landing spots near Florida. That’s because the winds and seas were predicted to be particularly calm and serene, just as the Crew Dragon spacecraft said it would. resilience Floated down into the sea and slowly sank, awaiting the arrival of a rescue ship.

Inside a crew of four waited — commander Jared Isaacman, a billionaire who funded the mission and had just completed his second private spaceflight; SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who were the company’s first employees to fly into orbit; and pilot Kid Poteat.

He was happy to be home.

“Our mission is accomplished,” Isaacman said after the spacecraft landed.

A significant success

Their mission, certainly the most ambitious private spaceflight ever attempted, was a complete success. This mission, flying under the name Polaris Dawn At an altitude of 1,408.1 kilometers on the first day of flight, it was the highest Earth-orbit mission ever and the farthest manned flight from our planet since the Apollo missions more than half a century ago.

Then, on the third day of the flight, the four crew members wore space suits designed and developed over the past two years. After leaving the cabin environment into space, first Isaacman and then Gillis spent several minutes unpacking their bodies from the Dragon spacecraft. This was the first private spacewalk in history.

Although this expedition into space largely replicated the tethered spacewalks performed by the Soviet Union and then the United States in the mid-1960s, it was still significant. These commercial space suits cost much less than government suits and can be considered version 1.0 of the suits that may one day enable many people to walk in space, on the Moon, and eventually Mars.

Finally, on the mission’s final full day in space, the Dragon spacecraft demonstrated contact with a mesh of Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit. The crew held a 40-minute uninterrupted video call with flight operators at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. During that time, Dragon maintained contact with the Starlink satellites via laser link through 16 firings of the spacecraft’s Draco thrusters, according to the company.

This test demonstrated the feasibility of using thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit as a means of providing high-speed internet to people and spacecraft in space.

Wait, isn’t this just a billionaire’s joyride?

Some people have misunderstood the mission. They saw Isaacman as a financial technology billionaire fulfilling his desire to go to space inside a crew vehicle built by Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX. Thus, it appeared to be a roller-coaster ride only for the super-rich and famous – for people who could not satisfy their thrill-seeking with the pleasures they could get on planet Earth.

I understand this point of view, but I do not agree with it.