How it Happened: The Next Astronauts

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In How it Happened: The Next Astronauts, Axios space reporter Miriam Kramer follows the first space flight to orbit without professional astronauts. 

Kramer will take listeners inside the story of the Inspiration4 mission, which SpaceX aims to launch on Sept. 15. 

The podcast will chronicle the selection of these four civilians and their training at SpaceX headquarters.

Kramer will go behind the scenes, bringing listeners into conversations with the crew as they grapple with challenges, the risks inherent in space travel and preparing their families for the launch.

The mission has high stakes for the crew and for SpaceX, but it's also pivotal for the industry and could influence the future of private space travel.

First, in this prologue, Kramer brings listeners into the current moment for the space industry and why so much is riding on this particular mission.

Listen now to the prologue and subscribe to hear the new season when it launches on Aug. 31, 2021.

Sign up to receive an email alert when the first episode drops.

Credits: The Next Astronauts is reported and produced by Miriam Kramer, Amy Pedulla, Naomi Shavin, and Alice Wilder. Dan Bobkoff is Executive Producer. Mixing, sound design, and music supervision by Alex Sugiura. Theme music and original score by Michael Hanf. Fact-checking and research by Jacob Knutson. Alison Snyder is a managing editor at Axios and Sara Kehaulani Goo is Executive Editor. Special thanks to  Axios co-founders Mike Allen, Jim VandeHei and Roy Schwartz.

1. Introducing How it Happened Season Two: The Next Astronauts

Axios' Miriam Kramer follows the first space flight to orbit without professional astronauts.

Illustration of a globe with a rocket ship in front of it

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How It Happened

<div><iframe frameBorder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://player.megaphone.fm/AXIOS8167018072?" width="100%"></iframe><div style="display:none"></div></div><p><strong>In How it Happened: The Next Astronauts,</strong> Axios space reporter Miriam Kramer follows the first space flight to orbit without professional astronauts. </p><p>Kramer will take listeners inside the story of the Inspiration4 mission, which SpaceX aims to launch on Sept. 15. </p>

A look at the scientific breakthroughs changing the world, explorations in space and in worlds beyond our own and the threats posed to us by our own planet, both out of our control and of our own making.

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Axios Space

The launch next month of the first all-civilian mission to orbit is an ambitious test for a burgeoning space industry's futuristic dream of sending many more ordinary people to space in the next few years.

Why it matters: Companies and nations envision millions of people living and working in space without having to become professional, government-backed astronauts. Those hopes are riding on SpaceX's next crewed mission, called Inspiration4.

Previous launches have taken billionaires to suborbital space or sent space tourists to the International Space Station alongside professional astronauts, but this mission is the first with a crew made up entirely of amateur astronauts.

What's happening: Inspiration4 is effectively a proof of concept for the idea that an all-civilian mission aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft — and ostensibly that all-amateur spaceflight — can work. 

Four crewmembers  — Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Chris Sembroski and Hayley Arceneaux — will launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sept. 15. 

They will orbit the Earth for about three days, flying higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope before coming in for a splashdown off the Florida coast. 

During their mission, the crew will live in close quarters, stare down at Earth and at the stars, perform science experiments and keep an eye on how their spacecraft is performing while mission controllers monitor it from the ground.

The big picture: SpaceX wants space travel one day to be akin to air travel so that anyone who wants to can fly to orbit or far-off parts of space. 

"We'd like to see aircraft like — airline, like — operations from a human spaceflight perspective, and so this chance to have our first commercial all-civilian flight is awesome," SpaceX director of human spaceflight Benji Reed told me. 

Yes, but: Flying to space isn't anything like flying on a commercial airliner, at least not yet. 

It's taken this crew months of training in locations around the U.S. to get ready for their launch, and it has dominated their lives since the full crew was announced in March.

The four crewmembers have effectively gotten a crash course in astronaut training, spending time in simulators, studying reams of notes on their own time and taking quizzes from SpaceX.

While they may not be professionals, they will certainly not be like a typical airline passenger when they fly to space in September. Their training has effectively been a test of how much pre-flight instruction ordinary people will need to fly to orbit and how quickly that process can go.

How it works: Inspiration4's crew was chosen through means more akin to something on reality TV than professional astronaut selection.

Isaacman wanted the mission to be all-civilian from the start and he didn't want to just take a few of his friends along for the ride. 

Instead, he decided to add a fundraising component — raising $100 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital on top of Isaacman's $100 million donation — and open up seats to complete strangers.

Sembroski was chosen via a sweepstakes that anyone could enter. Proctor won her seat through a contest for entrepreneurs. Arceneaux — a childhood cancer survivor treated by St. Jude who is now a physician assistant at the hospital — was picked by the charity to represent it in space.

The bottom line: Inspiration4 is a coming-of-age moment for an adolescent commercial spaceflight industry trying to fly many more people to space in the future.

Go deeper: Listen to the first episode of the new season of Axios' How it Happened: The Next Astronauts here.

2. A mission to space like no other

Axios spent six months behind the scenes of the first all-civilian mission to space.

Illustrated collage of an astronaut holding a coffee mug in a gridded vortex in space. 

3. Private companies are changing who gets to go to space

Companies like SpaceX are helping open up access to space for many more people than ever before.

Illustrated collage of an astronaut looking over a gridded vortex wall into space.

<div><iframe frameBorder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://player.megaphone.fm/AXIOS6509562753?" width="100%"></iframe><div style="display:none"></div></div><p>Private missions to orbit like the all-civilian Inspiration4 launching later this month are opening access to space to people who historically haven&#x27;t gone there.</p><p><strong>Why it matters:</strong> Fewer than 600 people have flown to space, and most of them have been white men. But with the rise of commercial spaceflight that&#x27;s expected to change.</p>

The all-civilian Inspiration4 crew's training program to prepare them for their trip to orbit is a reality check on the space industry's goal to send many more ordinary people to space. 

Why it matters: One day SpaceX, which is operating the upcoming mission, hopes to help establish a settlement on Mars and other companies like Blue Origin are working to build futures where millions of people live and work in space. In order to do that, more people need to fly to space — with far less preparation and more ease.

That starts with Inspiration4. The mission is a proof of concept for SpaceX as it begins to fly people who aren't professional astronauts.

How it works: The Inspiration4 crew — Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Chris Sembroski and Hayley Arceneaux — have been training together for less than six months, since the full crew was announced at the end of March.

The crew has spent hours in simulators learning how to operate the Dragon capsule and used time away from SpaceX headquarters to study on their own, taking quizzes and ingesting binders of protocols and systems breakdowns.

Isaacman, the commander of the mission, planned extracurricular training activities for the crew, like a climb up Mount Rainier in Washington state and flying in fighter jets in Bozeman, Montana. 

The details: The crew's training at SpaceX was also punctuated by a 30-hour test run inside a full-sized Dragon simulator at the company's headquarters. 

They ate what they'll eat in space and even had to sit through a simulated launch delay caused by weather as rotating crews of mission controllers kept an eye on them from the "ground." 

Throughout the simulated mission, SpaceX kept them and their flight controllers on their toes with problems they would need to solve to get the capsule running normally.

As the capsule came back from its simulated trip to space, everything started to go wrong in a cascading series of failures that almost made the trip end in failure. 

"The last 45 minutes, there was awareness from us in the capsule and them on the ground... There is like a chance that this might not be actually a survivable situation," Isaacman told me.

And yet, the crew and their mission managers got everyone back to Earth safely. 

What's next: All of this training will culminate a three-day mission tailored to this crew's needs and desires. 

They're planning to eat cold pizza and other fresh foods their first day in orbit.

The crew is also picking out movies they'll be able to watch while up in space.

And SpaceX has even installed a huge bubble window — called a cupola — at the top of their Dragon capsule to give the crew incredible 360-degree views of space and Earth. 

Yes, but: This training has taken over their lives. 

Multiple crewmembers have had to put their day jobs on pause in order to focus full-time on training to go to space. 

Most people can't take on this kind of obligation, and by the time this crew finishes training, they'll have far more in common with professional astronauts than an average civilian off the street.

SpaceX did pare down its training for this crew, but much of what they learned is still in line with what professional astronaut training entails, like learning the ins and outs of Dragon's engineering and how to take over if something fails.

The bottom line: If the plan is — as SpaceX has said — to get spaceflight to the point where it's like airline operations are today, the company is going to need to find a way to streamline training, making it quicker and easier for civilians to fly.

Private companies are changing who gets to go to space (Axios)

4. What it takes to train for space

Four civilians are about to take flight with SpaceX for a mission to orbit like no other.

Illustration of an astronaut floating upwards over a gridded staircase 

<div><iframe frameBorder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://player.megaphone.fm/AXIOS8193259321?" width="100%"></iframe><div style="display:none"></div></div><p>The all-civilian Inspiration4 crew&#x27;s training program to prepare them for their trip to orbit is a reality check on the space industry&#x27;s goal to send many more ordinary people to space. </p><p><strong>Why it matters:</strong> One day SpaceX, which is operating the upcoming mission, hopes to help establish a settlement on Mars and other companies like Blue Origin are working to build futures where millions of people live and work in space. In order to do that, more people need to fly to space — with far less preparation and more ease.</p>

The all-civilian Inspiration4 crew, launching to orbit this week, will force the space industry to contend with just how much risk ordinary people are willing to take on in order to build humanity's future in space. 

Why it matters: The private space industry's goal of building an economy in space hinges on sending more people to orbit in the near future. But spaceflight is still an incredibly risky endeavor and it will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future.

Professional astronauts are compensated for risking their lives to live and work in space, but private citizens — and their families — have to be willing to take risks without compensation.

Driving the news: Inspiration4 — the first all-civilian flight to orbit — is expected to launch from Florida on Wednesday at 8:02pm ET.

The crew will spend three days aboard their SpaceX Dragon capsule living in space and performing experiments. 

Jared Isaacman, the commander of the mission and its organizer, is paying for the flight and had a hand in selecting the three other crewmembers — all ordinary people — flying to orbit with him. 

Sian Proctor was picked through a reality TV show-style competition for entrepreneurs, Hayley Arceneaux was chosen by her employer St. Jude Children's Research Hospital — the beneficiary of a fundraiser that's part of the mission, and Chris Sembroski was chosen by raffle.

The big picture: Inspiration4 and the missions that follow it present risks that companies like SpaceX have to convince ordinary people to take if they want to eventually build a city on Mars.

"I'll be very blunt. People are going to die. And if you don't think that can happen, then you don't understand the nature of the business," Wayne Hale, an engineer who used to work for NASA, told Axios.

The intrigue: Private individuals can't count on government regulations to keep them safe when they fly to space with private companies, at least not yet.

These missions aren't regulated for the safety of the passengers or the crew onboard by the Federal Aviation Administration. 

Congress placed a moratorium on new crew safety regulations in 2004 in order to allow the private spaceflight industry to get off the ground and shore up a customer base. 

That means the FAA is allowed to regulate a private, crewed launch for the safety of people on the ground but not the "spaceflight participants" flying to orbit or suborbital flights in the case of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

Between the lines: When people go to space, it affects the families they leave behind on the ground. 

"You need to be prepared to sit down and have some hard discussions with the significant others in your life and explain to them why, if things don't turn out well, it was still worth the risk," Hale said.

With Inspiration4, the families of the civilians flying to orbit haven't had years to prepare for the emotional toll this mission could take. Instead, they've only had a handful of months to get ready.

"I need him back safe and sound," Erin Duncan-Sembroski, Chris Sembroski's wife, told me. "And so I think I'll really start celebrating when he's back on the ground."

5. Wrestling with the risks of private missions to space

When people to go space, they leave their loved ones behind on Earth.

Illustration of a space ship in space with a curving grid beneath it

<div><iframe frameBorder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://player.megaphone.fm/AXIOS3855598321?" width="100%"></iframe><div style="display:none"></div></div><p>The all-civilian Inspiration4 crew, launching to orbit this week, will force the space industry to contend with just how much risk ordinary people are willing to take on in order to build humanity&#x27;s future in space. </p><p><strong>Why it matters:</strong> The private space industry&#x27;s goal of building an economy in space hinges on sending more people to orbit in the near future. But spaceflight is still an incredibly risky endeavor and it will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future.</p>

The new era of private spaceflight — heralded by the all-civilian Inspiration4 crew — is at risk of lacking the transparency of missions led by NASA and other space agencies.

Why it matters: Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are trying to woo more customers in the coming years to help bring about their vision for humanity in space. Bringing in new customers hinges on those people having a clear picture of the risks of space travel. 

Catch up quick: The Inspiration4 crew returned to Earth on Sept. 18 after launching to orbit three days earlier. 

Sian Proctor, Chris Sembroski, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux told Axios they all had incredible, even life-changing, experiences flying and training with SpaceX. 

"Every day has been the best day of my life, and it's only getting better," Proctor told Axios just ahead of launch.

The crew represents a shift in who is able to access space, expanding the definition of "astronaut" to more kinds of people than NASA has historically included.

Yes, but: The public didn't have much access to the crew and their experiences while they were in orbit. 

Much of this was logistical, according to Isaacman. Because of its purely commercial nature, Inspiration4 couldn't use the full network of technology used for government missions.

"We had no ground station coverage," Isaacman told me after landing. "This was not a government mission."

Background: Historically, access to information about space and human spaceflight has been governed by NASA and other space agencies that are largely committed to communicating with the public. 

The act that established NASA in 1958 required the agency to "provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof," and that openness has remained through today.

NASA also brings that openness to missions it flies through contracts with SpaceX. The company does air livestreams of NASA crews in orbit during flights to the International Space Station.

The big picture: Private companies like SpaceX are increasingly being tasked with building our future in space. 

SpaceX hopes to one day build a city on Mars. Jeff Bezos dreams of creating large space stations in orbit. And NASA is hoping to use partnerships with private companies like these to fly astronauts to various destinations in space.

Inspiration4 has shown that these private companies can create a future where more people from a variety of backgrounds can go to space.

But these companies don't necessarily have the same commitment to transparency as NASA does, and that could create a situation where important information isn't shared readily. 

Virgin Galactic's flight with its founder Richard Branson in July, for example, violated rules set out by the Federal Aviation Administration around where its spaceplane could fly.

That error didn't come out until a New Yorker story revealed the mishap. The live webcast of the launch — featuring flashy guest stars — never suggested anything was amiss. 

SpaceX also has a history of flouting FAA regulations in order to launch its own test rockets in Texas. 

What to watch... whether future private missions with SpaceX will find ways to communicate with the public while in orbit as the company continues to launch private missions to space.

The bottom line: A future in space supported by private companies may not be as transparent for members of the public as the previous era in space driven by governments.

6. What's lost when spaceflight goes private

The Inspiration4 mission showed how great private spaceflight can be but it also revealed its limitations.

Photo Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios. Photo: SpaceX via Flickr

<div><iframe frameBorder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://player.megaphone.fm/AXIOS2782560707?" width="100%"></iframe><div style="display:none"></div></div><p>The new era of private spaceflight — heralded by the all-civilian Inspiration4 crew — is at risk of lacking the transparency of missions led by<strong> </strong>NASA and other space agencies.</p><p><strong>Why it matters: </strong>Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are trying to woo<strong> </strong>more customers in the coming years to help bring about their vision for humanity in space.<strong> </strong>Bringing in new customers hinges on those people having a clear picture of the risks of space travel. </p>

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3. Private companies are changing who gets to go to space