Twenty-one current and former employees of Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin published a damning essay on Thursday saying the company “turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns, and silences those who seek to correct wrongs.”

Co-authored by Blue Origin’s former head of employee communications Alexandra Abrams, the essay describes multiple accounts of sexist and dismissive behavior from some of the company’s “one-hundred percent” male senior technical and program leaders and says “professional dissent at Blue Origin is actively stifled.”

The employees accuse the company’s CEO, Bob Smith, of brushing off dissent by discouraging staff from raising questions during internal town halls, asking a colleague to track “troublemakers or agitators,” and forcing out employees for speaking out about safety issues related to Blue Origin’s New Shepard tourism rocket. “Smith’s inner circle of loyalists makes unilateral decisions, often without the buy-in of engineers, other experts, or senior leaders across various departments,” the employees say.

In an interview with CBS this morning, Abrams, speaking out for the first time, said she was fired by Blue Origin in 2019, quoting her manager as saying, “Bob and I can’t trust you anymore,” referring to the CEO. “You cannot create a culture of safety and a culture of fear at the same time,” Abrams said in the interview. “I’ve gotten far enough away from it that I’m not afraid enough to let them silence me anymore.”

In a statement to The Verge, a Blue Origin spokesperson said, “Blue Origin has no tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind. We provide numerous avenues for employees, including a 24/7 anonymous hotline, and will promptly investigate any new claims of misconduct.”

The spokesperson also said Abrams was fired “after repeated warnings for issues involving federal export control regulations,” a claim Abrams denied to CBS News.

The essay, published on Lioness, a platform for whistleblowers, indicated Blue Origin sometimes overlooked safety issues to favor speed amid heated competition with other billionaire-backed companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. “Competing with other billionaires — and ‘making progress for Jeff’ — seemed to take precedence over safety concerns that would have slowed down the schedule,” the employees said.

A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration, which manages launch safety and oversees flights of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, said, “the FAA takes every safety allegation seriously, and the agency is reviewing the information.”

In the essay, the employees also recounted sexism from colleagues, including a former, unnamed executive who would call female employees “baby girl,” “baby doll,” or “sweetheart” and ask about their dating lives. “It appeared to many of us that he was protected by his close personal relationship with Bezos — it took him physically groping a female subordinate for him to finally be let go,” they said. Another passage included:

Additionally, a former NASA astronaut and Blue Origin senior leader once instructed a group of women with whom he was collaborating: “You should ask my opinion because I am a man.” We found many company leaders to be unapproachable and showing clear bias against women. Concerns related to flying New Shepard were consistently shut down, and women were demeaned for raising them. When one man was let go for poor performance, he was allowed to leave with dignity, even a going-away party. Yet when a woman leader who had significantly improved her department’s performance was let go, she was ordered to leave immediately, with security hovering until she exited the building five minutes later.

On top of the safety and sexism claims, the letter attacks Bezos and Blue Origin’s record on environmental issues. The employees say while Bezos touts his climate initiatives, Blue Origin has no plans to be carbon neutral or reduce its environmental footprint and that some machinery ordered by the company was done so without considering its waste levels or whether it’d need permits to manage the waste.

The employees also described harsh and demanding conditions that have “taken a toll on the mental health of many of the people who make Blue Origin’s operations possible.” The essay cites internal memos, including one that cast SpaceX as a model, “in that ‘burnout was part of their labor strategy.’”

On Friday, CNBC obtained a letter from Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith to his employees addressing the allegations. Smith said in the letter that the company would “reflect on what we can learn and improve” and that it has “no tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind.”

He also said, “the New Shepard team went through a methodical and pain-staking process to certify our vehicle for First Human Flight. Anyone that claims otherwise is uninformed and simply incorrect.”

Blue Origin has struggled with internal strife in the past.

In 2020, The Verge reported that Blue Origin employees were outraged by the pressure they faced from senior leadership to continue in-person work and travel for a New Shepard test launch during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when much of the country was locking down to curb the virus’s spread. Responding to employee concerns in one meeting, Jeff Ashby, the company’s senior mission assurance director and a former NASA astronaut, said: “I would say that you should ask yourself, as an individual, are you acting as a toxin in the organization, fanning discontent, or are you really trying to help our senior leaders make better decisions?”

Update September 30th, 2:35PM ET: Added additional information from the essay and a statement from the FAA.

Update October 1st, 11:27AM ET: Updated with information from Smith’s letter to Blue Origin employees.

The body of NASA tasked with managing human spaceflight is being split into two distinct directorates, the agency’s chief announced on Tuesday, embarking on a major reorganization that past officials have tried and failed to execute for years. The move comes as private companies like SpaceX demonstrate leaner methods of putting people in space and as NASA pushes ahead with ambitious plans to build settlements on the surface of the Moon in the next decade.

The breakup of NASA’s human exploration wing, called Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, will spawn two new bodies: first, the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, which will manage NASA’s most ambitious development programs like the Artemis program that are still in formative and testing phases. The second will be the Space Operations Mission Directorate, which will handle more routine, operational programs like the International Space Station and the Commercial Crew Program. Agency officials say categorizing programs based on levels of development rather than areas of expertise will help refine NASA’s focus.

The organizational shakeup was a “strong” recommendation from President Biden’s transition team, Nelson told reporters during a press conference on the changes. One major advantage of the change involves NASA’s budgeting process, which is often fraught with complexity and frequently faces pushback from members of Congress who complain NASA doesn’t provide enough clarity on its exploration plans. With the broad human exploration program now split in two, complex and sometimes ambiguous programs won’t be as intermixed with NASA’s more routine programs. And the two bodies will have separate leaders rather than a single official whose workload has seen steep growth in recent years.

“Two heads are better than one,” Kathy Lueders, the current head of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said during a town hall in Washington, DC, with the agency’s workforce on Tuesday. Lueders, who previously led NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, will move from her post as human spaceflight chief to helm the Space Operations Mission Directorate. Jim Free, a former deputy associate administrator who held senior roles in NASA’s Orion capsule program, will lead the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.

But not everyone in the space industry will be happy with the change. Lueders, seen by many as a champion for commercial space because of her experience leading the Commercial Crew Program during its formative years, won’t be as involved in the agency’s biggest development programs like Artemis anymore. Critics of the reorganization are also likely to see it as more red tape and a new burden of coordination between the two offices that will have to stay in touch on related space programs.

“We’re actually not adding a whole new layer of people,” NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy told reporters after the town hall, addressing critiques of the move. “There are very few additional positions that will be required… the challenges that we have in coordinating across organizations is exactly the same as it is today.”

“Both of these people are extremely qualified,” Nelson told reporters. “It was obvious, it was common sense, that Kathy’s success should continue in the space operations mission directorate.” Employing a southern colloquialism, he added his decision to pick Lueders and Free for the roles “was as easy of a decision as falling off a log.”

Studies conducted by NASA’s senior leadership under the Trump administration, when Nelson’s predecessor Jim Bridenstine was leading NASA, recommended a similar idea: NASA should spin-off elements related to its ambitious Artemis program into a separate directorate with its own leadership, giving it the focus and resources it’d need to execute an ambitious timeline of putting astronauts on the Moon by 2024. That advice was shelved at the time, current and former officials say, partially because it subtracted resources from other directorates, which frustrated members of Congress.

But now, growing activity in the commercial space arena and the increasing cadence of human space travel, as SpaceX’s recent all-civilian mission to orbit last week showed, warrant changes to how NASA has managed its biggest human spaceflight programs for nearly a decade, NASA’s senior leadership say.

“The last decade has seen extraordinary change and growth,” Melroy said at the town hall. “The impact that NASA has had on commercial space has created new capabilities that we didn’t even know we could rely on.” Citing future development plans with NASA’s long-delayed and over-budget Space Launch System, which is poised to launch for the first time later this year or early next year, Melroy added: “This is exactly the time for us to take a deep breath and say, ‘Wow, we have a chain of development programs, no longer just one monolithic program. How are we going to manage this huge change in scope?’”

NASA’s Artemis program includes a wide range of technologies that fall under the now-decentralized human exploration directorate. SpaceX is developing its Starship system to send NASA’s first astronauts to the surface of the Moon by 2024 (that will probably get delayed). A new space station called Gateway that will orbit the Moon is in the works by a team of international partners. Lockheed Martin is building NASA’s Orion crew capsule to help astronauts get to the Moon. NASA’s Space Launch System, a behemoth rocket largely managed by Boeing, has been under construction for more than a decade to launch the Orion capsule to Gateway, where SpaceX’s Starship will pick up astronauts and land on the lunar surface. Artemis is a multibillion-dollar fandango, and until today, all of it sat next to other routine programs like the ISS, a $100 billion orbital research post that has housed rotating crews of international astronauts for over 20 years.

“This approach allows one mission directorate to operate in space, while the other builds space systems,” Melroy said.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule carrying four private citizens plunged through Earth’s atmosphere Saturday night and splashed down off the east coast of Florida, closing out the company’s first all-civilian mission in space. The Inspiration4 crew — the mission’s billionaire funder Jared Isaacman, geoscientist Sian Proctor, physician assistant Haley Arceneaux, and data engineer Chris Sembroski — became the first crew to hang out in Earth orbit without any professionally trained astronauts.

The crew’s splashdown zone in the Atlantic Ocean was roughly 30 miles east of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where they launched to space atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday. Beginning at about 7:02PM ET, Crew Dragon deployed two sets of parachutes — an initial set of two, and a final set of four — to ease its descent toward the ocean. Splashdown happened at around 7:06PM ET. SpaceX recovery teams raced toward the capsule in boats to retrieve the crew.

“Thanks so much SpaceX, it was a heck of a ride for us, and we’re just getting started” Isaacman told SpaceX’s mission control just after splashing down.

From an on-time launch at 8:02PM ET Wednesday to an on-time splashdown Saturday, the Inspiration4 mission lasted 71 hours total. The objectives of the orbital trek were two-fold: to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, a non-profit that researchers cancer and gives free care to kids with cancer and other life-threatening diseases, and conduct a scientific study on how the passengers’ bodies react to microgravity. Since launching on Wednesday, St. Jude raised roughly $20 million, putting the total fundraiser at about $153 million of its $200 million goal, St. Jude said.

With the amateur crew strapped inside, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon began its fully autonomous reentry process at around 6:11PM ET, when it ditched its trunk and fired a set of thrusters to lower itself out of orbit and toward Earth’s atmosphere. A live video feed from inside the capsule showed Sembroski taking advantage of some in-flight entertainment — a movie was playing on an iPad strapped to his knee.

The crew’s journey back to Earth appeared uneventful. They went through an expected, roughly seven-minute communications blackout with SpaceX’s mission control in California due to the sheath of plasma that forms around the capsule during its turbulent atmospheric reentry. During reentry, the exterior of the spacecraft reached temperatures of up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, but the crew was kept cool by their flight suits and reinforced air conditioning inside the capsule. Crew Dragon streaked across the skies above northeast South America and zoomed toward the Cape Canaveral coast.

An initial set of two parachutes deployed as planned, slowing the capsule from 350 miles per hour to 100MPH. Those parachutes were ditched less than a minute later at an altitude of nearly 1,800ft and replaced by another deployment of four main parachutes, which worked to slow the spacecraft down to about 15MPH at splashdown.

The capsule was hoisted out of the water and onto SpaceX’s “Go Searcher” boat roughly a half hour after splashing down. After that, recovery teams opened Crew Dragon’s hatch door and guided the crew out on a platform one by one, Arceneaux leading the pack. Proctor was next, practically grooving her way onto the platform. Sembroski and Isaacman followed. Isaacman’s egress was more of a toddle, his legs shaking a bit as he adjusted to Earth’s gravity. They’ll all get checked out by medical personnel and flown in a helicopter back to land.

The crew was in high spirits after stepping out of Crew Dragon, Inspiration4 mission director Scott Poteet told reporters during a post-splashdown press conference. “They’re taking selfies, they’re having a good time, they’re eating, they’re drinking, standing up and walking around.” 

For the crew’s three-day trip in orbit, roughly 363 miles high, they video chatted with St. Jude patients, rang the bell on the New York Stock Exchange, and kept in touch with friends and family. Isaacman placed a $4,000 bet to Las Vegas that the Eagles would win the Super Bowl, and at another point, remotely chatted with Tom Cruise. They put on a brief talent show on Friday in a livestream update — Sembroski jammed on a ukulele, Proctor showed off a drawing she made using a pack of metallic pens, and Arceneaux did somersaults in microgravity. “Hayley is a champ at spinning,” Proctor said as Arceneaux curled up in a ball and started tumbling in place.

The crew gathered data for a scientific study examining how microgravity affects the human body. During Friday’s video, Arceneaux showed off a device the crew was using to measure cranial pressure.

The Crew Dragon capsule, named Resilience, was the same spacecraft that nearly a year ago sent a four-person crew of government astronauts to the International Space Station and back. Few changes were made to the capsule besides a glass dome that was installed where the capsule’s docking door normally is, giving the passengers a 360-degree view of space while in orbit. The upper half of about three passengers could easily fit inside the dome.

Everything went nearly without a hitch, besides an issue with the capsule’s waste management system, or toilet. That was related to ”an issue with a fan that’s part of the system,” but it was quickly resolved, Inspiration4 mission director Todd Ericson said during a press conference. He did not offer additional details of the incident. Another issue during the mission involved a temperature sensor associated with one of Crew Dragon’s thrusters, but a backup sensor kicked in and worked fine, SpaceX’s director of crew mission management Benji Reed said. Overall, it was a “very clean mission from start to finish.”

Along with the mission’s official goals, Inspiration4 also showed that trips to orbit aren’t just for government astronauts anymore. Other missions will follow, including the first private mission to the ISS next year. The company that brokered that trip, Axiom Space, has already signed up for three additional trips to the ISS on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

“Welcome to the second space age,” Ericson said.

It was a brief orbital talent show.

“Hayley is a champ at spinning,” Sian Proctor, one of the four private citizens currently orbiting Earth inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, said of her crew mate Hayley Arceneaux, who was somersaulting in the weightlessness of space on camera. “She’s been spinning ever since we got on orbit.”

Christopher Sembroski, another crew mate, whipped out a ukulele and threatened to play it live on camera to over 55,000 viewers on SpaceX’s live YouTube stream — “You can turn your volume down if you wish, but I’ll give it a shot.” He did a little riff while Arceneaux was holding the mic, and it wasn’t half bad. “It’s still before coffee, so it’ll get better before the day goes on.”

Proctor showed off a drawing she made using a pack of metallic pens that depicted the Crew Dragon capsule blasting off Earth and leaving a trail of exhaust that looks like a dragon. “I have really enjoyed learning how to use markers in space,” she said.

The four-person Inspiration4 crew, which includes billionaire entrepreneur and the mission’s funder Jared Isaacman, has been zipping around the planet 15 times a day since Wednesday night, when they blasted to space on top of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. Friday afternoon, they gave their first update on what they’ve been up to in a live YouTube video nearly two days after lifting off — the lack of public communication itself an indicator that space is no longer just for government astronauts, who are typically far more transparent.

Proctor, Arceneaux, Sembroski and Isaacman represent the first fully private contingent of humans to enter orbit without the aegis of professionally trained astronauts. They also represent the inaugural private crew flown by SpaceX, which has flown just three crews of government astronauts before.

“We’re really proud to share this experience with everyone, we know how fortunate we are to be up here,” Isaacman said on camera. “We’re giving all of our time to science research and some ukulele-playing, and trying to raise some good awareness for an important cause back on Earth.”

Unlike Crew Dragon flights for government astronauts, who trek to the International Space Station, the Inspiration4’s spacecraft came equipped with a glass dome installed where Crew Dragon’s docking door would normally be. Proctor held the camera up to the dome, which appeared big enough to easily fit the upper torsos of three people. Facing Earth, it was dark outside, and the live camera feed was choppy and pixelated, but the crew could see the array of night lights dotting Earth’s surface. “Ooh, that looks like the aurora!” Proctor said. “Oh wow.”

Aside from the milestones, the Inspiration4 mission is primarily a massive fundraising event for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, a non-profit that conducts cancer research and gives free care to kids with cancer. The goal is $200 million; Isaacman donated the first $100 million and paid for the crew’s seats for an undisclosed amount. The rest is being raised through various efforts: some of the items the crew took with them to space — like hops for beer, NFTs, pieces of art, and stuffed animals — are supported by sponsorships from companies that have committed thousands in donations to St. Jude or will be auctioned off once back on Earth.

The crew also video chatted with St. Jude patients and rang the bell on the New York Stock Exchange (Isaacman’s payment-processing company, Shift4 Payments, is publicly traded). Isaacman placed a $4,000 bet to Las Vegas that the Eagles would win the Super Bowl. In the live video, Arceneaux showed off a device the crew is using to measure cranial pressure as part of a scientific study to monitor how their bodies behave in microgravity.

The Inspiration4 mission is expected to last about three days. They’ll reenter Earth’s atmosphere and splashdown in one of several locations off the coast of Florida on Saturday at around 7:06PM ET, SpaceX said.

SpaceX launched four private citizens to space on Wednesday, kicking off the first-ever crewed mission to orbit without any professional astronauts on board. Dubbed Inspiration4, the mission marks the latest private foray into space as companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX compete to normalize space travel for paying tourists, not just government astronauts.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on time at 8:02PM ET from the company’s 39A launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, soaring from Florida’s east coast under clear night skies. Inside the capsule is billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, a trained pilot and founder of payment-processing firm Shift4 Payments, and three others he picked and paid for to ride with him: Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old physician assistant and cancer survivor; Christopher Sembroski, a data engineer at Lockheed Martin; and Sian Proctor, a geoscientist and former NASA astronaut candidate.

The crew was buckled inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience capsule at the top of the rocket, reusing the spacecraft that sent four government astronauts to the International Space Station nearly a year ago. But for Inspiration4, the capsule won’t dock to the space station. It’s poised to spend roughly three days orbiting Earth at a higher altitude, some 360 miles above ground — the farthest human spaceflight since the last NASA space shuttle mission to repair the Hubble telescope in 2009.

Roughly nine minutes after liftoff, Falcon 9’s first stage booster returned to Earth for a landing on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. Minutes later, the Crew Dragon capsule separated from the rocket’s second stage as it was leaving Earth’s atmosphere, sending the Inspiration4 crew further toward orbit. The capsule will spend the next hour and a half gradually raising its orbit via intermittent thruster firings.

“The Dragon capsule and crew are in a nominal orbit,” SpaceX engineer and livestream anchor Andy Tran said. A live camera from inside the capsule showed the crew waving and giving double thumbs up.

The mission serves as a multimillion dollar fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, a non-profit research center that also provides free care for kids with cancer. Isaacman donated $100 million to the hospital and, with the Inspiration4 mission, aims to raise another $100 million. That part of the fundraiser has raised about $30.8 million so far. Isaacman, bankrolling most of the mission, won’t say how much he paid for each Crew Dragon seat, but they typically cost roughly $55 million a pop, according to a government watchdog report.

Inspiration4’s Crew Dragon capsule was tailored for a more touristy experience than what NASA astronauts have on their trips to the ISS. Months before the mission, SpaceX installed a massive glass dome, where the capsule’s station docking door normally is, to give Inspiration4 passengers a 360-degree view of space while in orbit. Though the glass dome hasn’t been tested in space, SpaceX’s director of crew mission management, Benji Reed, said it was put through a rigorous testing and qualification process before validating it as safe for flight.

The crew has a few activities planned during their stay in orbit — Sembroski is expected to play a ukulele made by Martin Guitar that’s stowed onboard as one of the several sponsorships riding along for the mission. Proctor brought along poetry and some personal art. And the whole crew is participating in a study on the effects microgravity has on the human body. SpaceX, Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine and investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine will collect biological samples from the passengers before the mission and plan to gather biomedical data on the passengers during the mission.

Exactly where and when the capsule reenters Earth’s atmosphere after its three-day mission depends on the weather conditions around the coasts of Florida. The capsule can spend up to a week in orbit if need be, Isaacman has said.

Update 8:45 PM ET: Updated with photos and additional information from SpaceX’s livestream.

Four people are set to launch to space Wednesday night aboard a SpaceX capsule, and none of them are professional astronauts. Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist, booked the Crew Dragon capsule last year and picked three normal folks to ride with him. It will be the first completely private mission to orbit.

Dubbed Inspiration 4, the mission is a multimillion-dollar fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Hospital and — like a lot of recent flights to space these days — an effort to convince those watching from the ground that space won’t be always be exclusive to government officials and the ultra-wealthy. Isaacman’s crew includes Hayley Arceneaux, a cancer survivor and St. Jude physician assistant; Sian Proctor, a geology professor and former NASA astronaut candidate; and Christopher Sembroski, a data engineer at Lockheed Martin.

The Inspiration 4 crew is slated to launch Wednesday at 8:02PM ET atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, buckled inside the same Crew Dragon capsule that nearly a year ago sent a four-person crew of government astronauts to the International Space Station and back. This mission’s destination is about 80 miles higher than the ISS. In orbit, they’ll view Earth through two windows and a new glass dome that was added to the top of the capsule, where Crew Dragon’s ISS docking door was. The crew will reenter the atmosphere after three days, depending on the weather around Florida, and splash down in the Atlantic ocean. SpaceX recovery teams will likely meet up with the capsule, hoist it onto a ship, extract the crew, and bring them ashore.

Isaacman, a trained pilot and the founder of a payment processing company, is the commander of the flight. He has said he wanted to arrange a diverse crew of passengers who weren’t billionaires. He paid for all four seats on Crew Dragon, and dropped the first $100 million of a $200 million fundraiser for St. Jude, a nonprofit research facility and hospital that provides free care to children with cancer. Isaacman reserved two of the seats for St. Jude — one would go to the winner of a fundraising campaign and the other would go to Arceneaux, who works at St. Jude as a physician assistant in Memphis, Tennessee and will serve as the mission’s medical officer.

Arceneaux, 29, is a childhood cancer survivor who will become the first person with a prosthetic body part to launch to space. Metal rods were placed in the part of her left leg that had a cancerous tumor as a child. Sembroski, the Lockheed engineer, will occupy the seat reserved for the winning participant of the St. Jude fundraising campaign. A friend of Sembroski’s won, but couldn’t go on the trip and passed the ticket to him instead.

The fourth seat went to Sian Proctor, the winner of a contest hosted by Shift4, the payment company owned by Isaacman. Contestants had to create a website using Shift4 software and produce a short video of themselves explaining why they wanted to go to space. Proctor, 51, taught geology at a community college in Phoenix, Arizona and will become the fourth Black woman, and the first person from Guam, to go to space. In 2009, she got close to becoming a NASA astronaut as one of nine finalists in a monthslong, notoriously difficult selection process.

The crew has been training since March, about seven months before liftoff. That includes centrifuge training to get used to the enormous G-forces of lifting off atop a rocket, a microgravity experience aboard a Zero-G flight, and weeks of training at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California to familiarize the passengers with Crew Dragon.

Besides the passengers’ personal mementos, like family items and school memorabilia, the mission is full of sponsorships: 66 pounds of hops are on board Crew Dragon that, once returned to Earth, will be used to brew beer by Samuel Adams, “the official beer of Inspiration4,” the mission group said in a press release, adding the brewer made “a maximum $100,000 donation to St. Jude.” All the passengers will wear branded watches, Sembroski will play an onboard ukulele from Martin Guitar, and a bunch of other things on board will get auctioned off once they’re back on the ground as part of the ongoing St. Jude fundraiser.

If all goes as planned, Inspiration 4 will mark the first fully private mission for SpaceX, which developed its Crew Dragon spacecraft as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. That program funded development of two competing space capsules — Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner — to serve as NASA astronauts’ ride to the ISS.

For the Commercial Crew Program, NASA is a customer — not an owner — of the spacecraft, much like Isaacman is the main customer for Inspiration4. A core goal behind the program was to help stimulate a market for commercial spaceflight, awarding SpaceX roughly $3 billion and Boeing roughly $5 billion to help get started. Boeing’s Starliner has yet to launch humans. But Isaacman’s mission, which will mark the fourth crewed flight for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, a key intent of NASA’s program, has come to fruition. As NASA’s human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders recently said in the Are We There Yet? podcast, Inspiration 4 “is like watching your kids graduate from college.”

But whether private space tourism will really be accessible to a larger swath of passengers remains to be seen. A seat on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon costs roughly $55 million, and a seat on Starliner is somewhere around $90 million, according to government watchdog reports.

For a shorter experience, other companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are offering brief suborbital jaunts to the edge of space — but these are still extremely expensive. Right now, Virgin Galactic charges $450,000 for a seat on its SpaceShipTwo, which flies some 53 miles high for a few minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth’s curvature. Blue Origin hasn’t announced prices for a seat aboard its suborbital New Shepard rocket, which launches about 66 miles above ground for a similar experience.

With Isaacman footing the multimillion-dollar bill for his three fellow passengers’ tickets to space, and both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic flying highly publicized back-to-back missions, the space tourism industry is in a phase buoyed by billionaire backers and ultra-wealthy customers. Getting out of this phase, as industry figures have said, will require drastic drops in the cost of building and launching rockets.

“We’ve been hearing that for so long, that until it happens, it’s not unusual that people are a little skeptical about that,” says Alan Ladwig, who in the 1980s led NASA’s Space Flight Participant Program, an initiative to send civilian storytellers like teachers and journalists to space as a way to get the public excited about human spaceflight.

“But in order to get to the endpoint we want, you have to go through this initial step, with the early adopters and paying higher costs to go in order to eventually lower the cost,” he said.