A billionaire’s private SpaceX flight filled its two remaining seats Tuesday with a scientist-teacher and a data engineer whose college friend actually won a spot but gave him the prize, per the AP. The new passengers: Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator in Tempe, Arizona, and Chris Sembroski, 41, a former Air Force missileman from Everett, Washington. They will join flight sponsor Jared Isaacman, 38, and another passenger, Haley Arceneaux, 29, for three days in orbit this fall. Isaacman also revealed some details about his Inspiration4 mission, as the four gathered Tuesday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He's head of Shift4 Payments, a credit card-processing company in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and he is paying for what would be SpaceX's first private flight while raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
In fact, this would be the first all-civilian crew to orbit Earth, notes the New York Times. Their SpaceX Dragon capsule will launch no earlier than mid-September, aiming for an altitude of 335 miles. That’s 75 miles higher than the International Space Station and on a level with the Hubble Space Telescope. Isaacman, a pilot who will serve as spacecraft commander, won’t say how much he’s paying. He's donating $100 million to St. Jude, while donors so far have contributed $13 million, primarily through the lottery that offered a chance to fly in space. Arceneaux is a St. Jude physician assistant who was treated there as a child for bone cancer. Sembroski donated and entered the lottery but wasn’t picked in the random drawing earlier this month—his friend was. His friend declined to fly for personal reasons and offered the spot to Sembroski.
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