Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space (2021) s01e01 Episode Script
Episode 1
[Jeffrey Kluger] I like to think of it
as humanity's great taunting.
Space taunts us because
it's always there, it's always visible,
it's directly across the cosmic window.
Just on the other side of the glass
is this great expanse
that we can see, we can imagine,
but we cannot touch.
And that lure is irresistible.
Throughout human history,
the enormity of space,
the great bowl of the sky
has always inspired equal parts
reverence, awe, and mortal terror.
Space is the place
we have been striving to go
since we first looked up at the stars.
And we have actually
been going since 1957.
[newscaster] Today a new moon
is in the sky:
a 23-inch metal sphere placed in orbit
by a Russian rocket.
[JFK] We choose to go to the moon
in this decade and do the other things,
not because they are easy,
but because they are hard.
[Kluger] The competition
between the US and the Soviet Union
turbocharged the space race.
We went from a standing start,
with no human being
ever having been off the planet,
to the surface of the moon in eight years.
[Neil Armstrong] It's one small step
for man, one giant leap for mankind.
[Kluger] The Space Race 1.0
was the US and the Soviet Union.
Space Race 2.0 is suddenly
the private sector saying,
"If I have the money, and I have
the know-how, and I have the will,
I can go to space."
On July 11, we saw Richard Branson
take his space plane 50 miles high
[woman over radio] Three, two, one,
release, release, release.
[Kluger] and gave its passengers
about three and a half, four minutes
in space.
I'm an adult in a spaceship
with lots of other wonderful adults!
[man over radio] two, one.
Ignition.
[Kluger] Nine days later, Jeff Bezos
flew over 62 miles high.
They flew passengers on an 11-minute
popgun suborbital space flight.
These were not small accomplishments.
What SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission
is about to do is vastly more ambitious
and will change the game entirely.
For the first time,
four civilians are going to space.
They will orbit the Earth
for three days by themselves.
These are four non-professional astronauts
flying a spacecraft around
and around the Earth.
This is a hinge point in history,
and will kick the doors open
to space for the rest of us.
[Jared Isaacman] Inspiration4 is four
people with very different backgrounds.
Every person who's gonna join this mission
has to be able to deliver a very powerful
and inspiring story in their own right.
We represent inclusive,
diverse access to space.
There have been three
Black female American astronauts.
I will be number four.
[Hayley Arceneaux] I'll be
the youngest American to go into orbit.
Also the first pediatric cancer survivor
to go to space.
When I heard that they were offering me
a seat, I had a flood of thoughts.
There's a lot of risk.
What happens if something goes wrong?
I have a family.
What is that gonna do to her
or what's it gonna do to our daughters?
[Kluger] It is a certainty
that we will become
a multi-planet species.
And this is the next significant step
to other worlds deep beyond Earth.
And it starts now.
[dramatic orchestral music playing]
["Go Let It Out" by Oasis playing]
My name is Jared Isaacman,
I'm 38 years old.
I'm commander of Inspiration4,
first all-civilian mission to space.
Life is precocious ♪
In a most peculiar way ♪
Sister psychosis
Don't got a lot to say ♪
She go let it out ♪
She go let it out ♪
She go let it out ♪
[Jared] I do believe you only get
one crack at life.
To the extent you have the means to do so,
you have this obligation
to live life to the fullest.
You never know when
it's going to be your last day.
That kind of philosophy has taken me
from my first two flights around the world
which were both world record attempts
in 2008 and 2009.
It's taken me to flying airshows as part
of a seven-ship formation acrobatic team.
It's taken me to some interesting places
in the world, like Antarctica,
on mountain climbing expeditions.
He's definitely adventurous.
I think he would tell you
he's not a daredevil,
'cause he likes to calculate his risks,
but he is like a daredevil.
[Jared] I just know how lucky I am,
and a large part of it is because
I've had a very successful day job
running a company that's
that's afforded me these opportunities.
[reporter 1] Jared Isaacman had an idea
that is now worth
more than $50 million.
He figured out a way for businesses
to process credit cards more quickly.
[reporter 2] High school dropout
turned businessman Jared Isaacman.
You're young, you created this
great company, you make a lot of money
You know, it's about opportunity.
[reporter 3] Jared's company grew
more than 2000%.
[reporter 4] CEO Jared Isaacman
is ringing the closing bell
of the New York Stock Exchange.
Go let it out ♪
Don't let it in
Don't let it in, don't let it in ♪
Jared always, like,
kinda keeps us on our toes.
Like, usually my feelings are like,
"Oh, no. Here it comes."
[laughs] Like, what's next?
But, that's just
It's always been in him,
like, since we started dating.
[Jared] I grew up with
a pretty independent, you know, lifestyle.
If I wanted to get something done,
I was gonna do it myself.
It's a big part of, you know,
how my life ultimately shaped out.
I grew up in New Jersey, and, uh,
I think I was a horrible student,
and I wasn't, like,
happy in school, either.
So, I made the decision
I wanted to leave school early
uh, when I was 15.
There's a pretty decent age gap
between myself and my, uh,
my older siblings. They were out,
kind of enjoying their lives
and having responsibility,
and, I'm like, I gotta raise my hand
to ask permission
to use the restroom in high school.
This doesn't make sense.
So, I left high school, I took my GED.
I started the business of what
became Shift4 when I was 16.
It was like a, you know, you wake up,
you know, at 7:30, 8:00 a.m.,
then you fall asleep on the keyboard
at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.
And you just keep doing it
over and over again.
After a couple years of doing that,
I kinda remember telling my father,
like, I'm getting burned out,
like, I gotta have something else
going on in my life right now.
From a pretty young age,
I definitely took interest in aviation.
So I went to the local airport,
and I went to the flight school there.
We went up in a Cessna 172.
This is 2004 or 2005, flying.
There's no Wi-Fi. It's super peaceful.
There's no one around to bug you
and it's, I mean, it's very therapeutic.
And when I did, I was like,
"Yeah, this is gonna be a thing now."
Once you know how to fly
a single-engine propeller plane,
you wanna fly a twin-engine
propeller plane, then you wanna fly jets.
Once you started going down
that slope, it was like,
well, what comes next?
Ex-military aircraft?
Can you fly fighter jets?
And it turns out, you can.
[dramatic music playing]
And that led to airshow teams.
[dramatic music continues]
Jared and I met at an airshow
while I was flying with the Thunderbirds.
That's my background,
20 years in the Air Force flying F16s.
And there's a lot of consistencies
and comparisons to the space world.
Jared knew he was going to space.
He just didn't know who, what,
or where, when, and how.
[woman] Start.
[man 1] T minus 15 seconds.
[Jared] 2008,
based on my interest in aviation,
I got an invitation
to watch the Soyuz go up.
- [man 1] Five, four, three, two, one.
- [woman] Prime, and lift-off.
[man 1] Lift-off of the Soyuz rocket
transporting Mike Fincke,
Yury Lonchacov, and Richard Garriott
to their home in space.
[Jared] And it was amazing.
[man 2] Flight controller standing by
for contact and capture
of the International Space Station.
[Jared] And it actually took
a space tourist up, Richard Garriott
was up on that mission.
[man] Richard Garriott launched
to the International Space Station
as a self-funded private astronaut.
So that was kind of my first
exposure to the idea that maybe
we're progressing towards
a world where it won't always
just be NASA astronauts
and Russian cosmonauts
that are going into space.
[man 2] Garriott waving goodbye
for the final time.
Twelve years later,
in 2020, I was on a call,
and I was talking to people
from SpaceX, and it was not related
to me going to space,
or any human being going to space,
it was a very unrelated conversation.
I did make a comment that, um,
"Whenever you guys are ready
to really open this thing up,
just, like, keep me in mind."
And this was like a closing comment
on a phone call. It was like,
"Well, actually we might be
a lot more ready than you might think,
and if you want, you have
the opportunity to be the first."
And I was just all over it.
[man] Our mission is
[Poteet] You know when Jared
wants to share something.
The way he says something, it's like,
"Okay, he has something to share."
We were in New York for business purposes,
and we went for a run around Central Park,
and usually, he's on his earpiece,
listening to some business podcast,
um, ignores me.
But this time he was talking.
He started to allude to the space mission,
and I didn't fully grasp
what he was talking about.
He starts talking about
how he met with SpaceX,
and this opportunity has presented itself,
and I'm like, "Is he really
talking about going to space?"
"Like, there's no way."
The more and more he explained,
the more details he provided, and I'm like
"Dude, are you going to space?"
And he's like, "Yup."
And I'm like "Holy shit."
In a matter of a couple weeks,
we go from Jared telling me
he's gonna do this space thing,
to here we are at SpaceX.
It was like, "This is for reals.
Dude, you're going to space."
"That's insane."
[tour guide] Um, I thought what
we would do is start out here
with this beautiful thing,
this beautiful Falcon 9 rocket.
Um, and this rocket
is a very special rocket.
Early on, there were talks that,
like, one day he'd go to space.
I mean, you don't believe it when,
like, somebody's telling you,
but I'm like, "All right, he's got dreams"
and you kinda, like, accept them.
He broke the news.
Yeah, I think the tears
definitely came down.
All you think is, "My spouse,
my husband, father of my children,
is going to space."
We don't know the risk, right?
You just automatically think, like,
"Wow, something can happen."
He's always been adventurous, so
this was just on a different level.
Okay, now everybody knows
how to launch one, and how to land one.
You've got all the secret sauce.
Don't go make your own
rocket company, okay?
[Jared] If you look at SpaceX,
their vision right from the start is,
make humankind
a multi-planetary species, because
we got a lot of eggs in one basket here.
And it didn't go really well
for the dinosaurs.
The reason I started SpaceX
was to help make life multi-planetary,
to get humanity to Mars.
The future is vastly
more exciting and interesting
if we're a space-faring civilization
and a multi-planet species
than if we are not.
And I can't think of anything
more exciting than going out there
- and being among the stars.
- [cheers, applause]
[Musk] It's important for the future of
humanity to be a multi-planet species,
so that we better understand
the nature of the universe,
and also protects against
some calamity on Earth.
The initial model of a rocket was
that it would be a use once,
throw-away machine.
Now that's a big machine to throw away.
The Saturn V rocket cost $400 million
to build and launch,
and that was in 1960s money.
And it was used a single time.
Elon saw something different.
Elon believed we can reuse these rockets.
[crowd] Five, four, three, two, one.
Liftoff!
SpaceX was the first company
to prove out reusability of rockets.
Reusability is the holy grail.
It's a profound breakthrough.
[crowd cheers]
[man] Successful separation,
we're coming up on
This was something that was
not supposed to be able to be done.
["E-Pro" by Beck playing]
[crowd cheering]
[woman] And the Falcons have landed!
[cheering continues]
[Jared] His team that he assembled,
that believe in his vision,
have done what no one
thought was possible.
It's been six years since they first
landed a rocket on a ship.
No one else has done it.
["E-Pro" continues playing]
[Musk] SpaceX today is responsible
for about two-thirds of
all of the Earth's payload to orbit
last year.
We're the only means
by which the United States
is able to get astronauts
to the Space Station.
You start flying cargo, and then you're
launching people for the first time,
and now we've done three missions
with humans on board.
[man] Welcome back to Planet Earth,
thanks for flying SpaceX.
The next chapter's definitely
to make it more and more accessible
to regular folks.
We're gonna be flying
civilians for the first time.
[Jared] Not in my zone yet.
It's hard, there's rockets
being built around me and everything.
Inspiration4 will be another change point
in the history of space travel.
[Jared] We're calling
the mission Inspiration4.
We chose this name because the principal
mission objective is to inspire.
The number four is symbolic
for several reasons.
There will be four crew members
on this spacecraft,
and it will also be the fourth
manned mission from the United States
since the space shuttle
was retired almost a decade ago.
[woman] So, guys, from this point on,
no photos will be allowed in the facility.
[Jared] I look at it
as an immense challenge.
I'm so excited to get into the books
and start getting in the simulator
and playing around with,
uh, this great engineering marvel
you guys have created here.
[Musk] We're trying to make the dream
of space accessible to anyone.
This Inspiration4 mission
helps bring awareness
of spaceflight to a lot of people,
makes it more personal.
Hopefully, as the name suggests,
it inspires people about spaceflight.
You need pioneers like Jared
in order to have the future mission
and ultimately making
science fiction not fiction forever.
- [Jared] Morning, nice to see you.
- [man] Nice to see you.
- Good! I'm Jared.
- Sarah.
- Hey, Sarah.
- Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you as well. Cool.
[man] So, we're at a very exciting
milestone with you here today, Jared,
with our kickoff.
As you know, I'm your mission manager.
Uh, as I mentioned,
we want to talk trajectory.
For this Inspiration4 mission,
the launch will actually
happen in three stages.
The Falcon rocket is called
the Falcon 9 rocket,
for the simple reason
that it has nine powerful engines
that are sufficient to accelerate
a spacecraft to orbit.
The Falcon 9 has a first stage,
has a second stage,
and stacked on top of that,
is the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
It's the place where the astronauts live,
it's the piece that will go into orbit.
When the Falcon 9 lifts off,
it will get about halfway
to orbital altitude, and the first stage
of the rocket will separate and fall away.
The second stage of the rocket
will light and accelerate
the Crew Dragon spacecraft
up to a continuous speed of about
17,500 miles an hour.
The second stage will fall away,
and the Dragon spacecraft will be
the only part that goes into orbit.
That will be the home of the crew
for the three days they're in orbit.
In order to orbit the Earth,
you have to be going at a continuous speed
of about 17,500 miles an hour.
When it's time to come home,
they turn around
and they begin to decelerate.
And it slows them down just a little bit,
so the spacecraft will descend
into the atmosphere.
A small parachute will pop out
and slow them down,
sort of a braking parachute,
then bigger parachutes will pop out,
and then they will be traveling
at just a few miles an hour,
and they will gently splash down
in the Atlantic Ocean.
[mission manager] All right.
Shall we? Nice touch to it.
- Who Who's that?
- [all laughing]
[Jared] Looks like
he knows what he's doing.
[mission manager] That guy
Jared is, um, an awesome person
to be a partner
on this first all-civilian flight.
He has a ton of experience
in flight as a pilot,
um, and does a lot of wild piloting stuff.
He also just has a great attitude.
He's a complete supporter
of our mission at SpaceX
to go multi-planetary,
and he's, uh, really
a very humble partner,
a very knowledgeable partner, as well.
[Ericson] Jared's not the guy
that's just showing up and saying,
"Hey, launch me to space."
He is fully committed and involved,
kind of the perfect guy for this.
He's got a ton of flight experience.
He has the technical ability
to understand.
[Jared] I just care that it has
that new Dragon smell.
[Reed] Yeah, it'll be
this is, this is, yeah.
What do they call it? Certified pre-owned.
[all laughing]
Jared understands that exploration
is all about pushing boundaries.
It's about going
where you haven't been before.
So that would be like keeping
an altitude roughly below 420 kilometers,
and I don't think there's any particular
or any major benefit in going above ISS.
All right, any questions?
I think it would be interesting
to maybe further explore
the option above ISS.
[Jared] I totally agree, and I guess,
just curious on Dragon Certification,
since that does go a touch above that.
Intuitively, going slightly above
would not present a problem,
but going above will start
to stretch our margins.
And there may be other problems
that I'm not aware of in other subsystems.
[man] Yeah, it's not one particular
thing, it's just opening Pandora's box.
The question really is,
"What are you looking for?"
"What's the driver
for that higher altitude?"
You know, when people have asked us
about just what we're trying to accomplish
with Inspiration4, if there is
a Jetsons' world we're all living in
and people are hopping in
their spaceship and cruising around,
at some point, it's gonna go a heck
of a lot farther than the Space Station.
So, assuming that it could be mitigated,
then, I think it is symbolic in that it is
that kind of pushing
that one step a little bit forward,
for everything else, you know, to follow.
Yeah.
This is gonna send a statement,
this is the first.
And the first comes with
a great deal of responsibility, like,
what message do we wanna send with this?
No, and that's a really fair point. And
that's part of the point of this mission.
- Yeah, we'll
- [Jared] Cool.
We'll talk more about
this one offline internally.
- [Ericson] Yeah.
- [Jared] We appreciate it
- [Ericson] For sure.
- [man] It's definitely huge.
[Ericson] Typically, a NASA mission
inserts into a 200-kilometer orbit,
but now, we're gonna go
about 575 kilometers high,
well above
the International Space Station.
If we are going to go to Mars,
taking a stride in that direction,
it is vitally important.
I think it speaks to, uh, really,
the intent of the mission, which is,
hey, to now inspire, you know,
and you inspire by doing things
that haven't been done before.
- Cool, man.
- [Ericson] See you next week.
- Yeah, see you in a week.
- All right. See you, brother.
[Ericson] What impressed me
about Jared was
that it is a heartfelt passion of his,
that he needs to do this right.
That he's setting a precedent
for all the missions to come.
[interviewer] There's been
a good amount of backlash
- to the so-called billionaires in space.
- Sure.
The criticism is
we have enough problems on Earth,
why are we spending time, energy,
and money getting off of Earth?
What's your response to that?
Yeah, I mean,
I don't think we should spend
I think we should spend
the majority of our resources
solving problems on Earth,
um, like 99% plus
of our, you know, economy should be
dedicated to solving problems on Earth,
but I think, maybe,
something like 1% or less than 1%,
could be applied
to extending life beyond Earth.
Think about a future where
we're a space-faring civilization,
and a multi-planet species, that's an
an exciting, inspiring future.
If life is just about problems, I mean,
why what's the point of living?
Space is not inexpensive,
like, we all know that.
What thoughts people
can potentially have on it
is, you know,
it's a billionaire going on a joyride,
the privileges of wealth,
to be able to go and
disregard all the, you know, uh,
that could be done here on Earth.
For me, like, anytime I've undertaken
any of these adventures in life,
there has to be some offset.
We're not gonna do this
if we can't make a huge difference
for the problems
the world's faced with today,
or we don't earn the right
to go up into space.
We gravitated right to St. Jude's
Children's Research Hospital.
[reporter] Isaacman says
this mission is much more
than fulfilling a childhood dream.
It's also a massive fundraising effort
to raise
an astonishing $200 million
for cancer research
at St. Jude Children's Hospital.
And he's writing the first personal check
for $100 million.
You definitely don't get
into my position in life
unless a couple of things
went your way at the right time.
And then you think about, well,
the extreme other end of the spectrum
is the families where nothing went right,
they got dealt a horrible hand in life,
um, and a lot of these kids in,
you know, don't even grow up
and have a chance
to experience even 1/100th, uh
of what I've had the opportunity
to experience, and it's just
it's an imbalance that's that sucks.
It's terrible.
We should do something about it.
We live? Everyone can hear us?
Good, thumbs up? All right.
I wanna welcome the two most
significant organizations
to this mission coming together
for the first time:
SpaceX, obviously, you have no means
to get to outer space
without all the great innovations and
capabilities you brought together,
and St. Jude's Children's
Research Hospital.
And why are we doing this?
To kick off what hopefully
is the most successful fundraising
and awareness campaign in history.
If we are going to eventually live
in a world
where everybody is capable of going out
and journeying amongst the stars,
then we'd better fight
childhood cancer along the way.
The other thing is, like,
the rest of the crew members
have to represent the good
we're trying to do with the mission.
We're not gonna go up
with a bunch of fishing buddies.
It's not gonna work that way.
Like, every person
who's gonna join this mission
has to be able to deliver
a very powerful and inspiring story
in their own right.
And that's where we came up
with our mission pillars.
Yeah, it might make sense
just to explain, like,
that seat selection process
and everything, you know?
We wanted a crew member to represent hope,
a crew member to represent generosity,
and a crew member to represent prosperity.
And there's my seat
to represent leadership.
We are going out and identifying
people to occupy those seats
that really represent
the best of humanity.
So, for our crew member
that represented hope,
we're teamed up so heavily with St. Jude's
Children's Research Hospital,
I can't think of anyone better
to represent the mission's spirit of hope
than a former cancer survivor who grew up
to become a healthcare professional.
And we went to St. Jude and said,
"You know, surely you might know
somebody who, you know,
who fits this profile."
We've already selected one person,
uh, who's a great humanitarian,
a first responder, you know,
a childhood cancer survivor,
treated at St. Jude, grew up
to become a healthcare professional,
and now is still in the fight at St. Jude
again helping other kids beat it.
My name is Hayley Arceneaux,
I'm 29 years old, and I'm from Louisiana,
but I live in Memphis.
- Thank you.
- [clerk] All right, have a great one.
[Hayley] Thank you.
I grew up in a really sweet,
small town called St. Francisville
in Louisiana.
[Colleen] She was very friendly,
and she loved meeting new people.
I'd always be like,
"Don't talk to strangers,
don't go home with strangers,"
I thought she would think,
"That might be a nice adventure
to go on" and I was afraid of that.
That's how friendly she was.
[Hayley] And I just had
this really happy childhood.
I was in dance, gymnastics,
and tae kwon do.
I was in tae kwon do alongside my dad.
We would go to practice
twice a week together.
And at age ten,
I'd just gotten my black belt,
and then, I was having pain in my knee,
and the doctor said, you know,
probably an overuse injury
from tae kwon do.
I took some over-the-counter meds,
stayed out of tae kwon do for a week,
felt better, um,
but then the pain started getting worse.
Well, I vividly remember the day
that I found the lump.
We were walking to the car
from school, and she was kind
of limping in the parking lot,
and I was like, "What's the matter?"
And she said,
"My knee hurts, my knee hurts."
So I said,
"I'll look at it when we get home."
She was making pancakes. She said, "Let me
look at your knee you were mentioning."
She looked at it and then she gasped.
And I remember she went over
to the fire where the pancakes were
and turned it off.
She kept saying,
"How long have you had that?"
And she pointed to this knot on my knee,
like right above my knee.
[Colleen] We went to the doctor
the next morning.
I snuck out in the hall
with the doctor, and I said,
"Could this be something serious?"
And the doctor just hugged me.
She gave me this big bear hug,
and, at that point, I just knew.
She ended up being diagnosed
with osteosarcoma,
which is bone cancer.
We returned home,
and my dad immediately looked up
osteosarcoma online
and found the St. Jude website.
In order to go to St. Jude,
they have to have a protocol
that they're studying that type
of cancer, which they were.
Hayley and I flew to Memphis.
I walked in and they had
the reception desk.
And I said, "I'm here.
My daughter is Hayl"
and I just burst into tears.
I couldn't even finish saying her name.
And I remember,
I just kind of stepped back,
and trying to compose myself,
and I feel these arms around me.
And it was the receptionist,
Miss Penny, and she whispered in my ear,
she said, "It's gonna be okay,
it's gonna be okay."
"You're part of the St. Jude family now.
We're going to take care of her,
and we're gonna take care of you too."
[Hayley] I underwent
intensive chemotherapy for almost a year,
and, I remember I asked a lot of questions
about losing my hair.
I was so worried about that.
And I remember being so worried
that my dog wouldn't recognize me.
It all started with losing little pieces
on my pillowcase.
Then it started coming out in chunks.
- I think we've been in this room before.
- We've been in all the rooms.
Yes, we've been in every room.
[Colleen] She had 12 rounds
of very intensive chemotherapy.
Her counts would drop, she wouldn't
have any immunity, and, of course,
everything made her sick.
[Hayley] I had several infections,
I needed numerous transfusions.
Midway through, I had surgery
to remove the part of my bone
that had the tumor on it.
- [Hayley] Come in.
- Hello! Hi, Hayley, how are you?
- [Hayley] Good. Here. It's numb.
- It starts to right here is numb
- But I can feel all of my foot.
- Okay.
When they removed the part of my bone
that was affected by the tumor,
they removed the growth plate.
And St. Jude had this cutting-edge
technology where they were able
to put in a prosthetic
that could be expanded
without the need for additional surgery.
And, they did that.
They expanded it five times.
Mom, I think I'm always gonna be
a centimeter longer in this leg.
Well, you're only three-fourths
of a centimeter longer right now.
- Oh!
- Yeah.
[Hayley] I was a tough kid.
I didn't cry much.
I tried to keep a really good attitude.
Hayley made an unbearable
situation bearable.
I'm trying to lift my leg
like my right leg, but, it's
I can't do that yet.
[Colleen] I had to give her
a shot every night,
and, I'd be like, "I'm sorry,"
and she'd be like, "That's okay,"
like, "Don't worry about it, it's okay."
And I always wanted to be very strong
for her to not have to do that
for her not to have to carry me along.
You're almost ready to run a race.
[Barnwell] Hayley, from day one,
wanted to make every day
better for everybody.
[Hayley] I would go up to all the donors
who were giving blood, and I would say,
"Thank you for donating.
If I didn't get blood and platelets,
I would shrivel up."
They even made me a little
St. Jude name badge that said
"Gratitude Administrator."
And I took my role really seriously,
like, I would tell people,
"I am a St. Jude employee."
She would say time and time again,
"I cannot wait to come back here
and help."
I remember thinking, "She'll do it,
if she survives this, she'll do it."
- [Hayley] My scans are clean?
- Yes.
- Yay!
- Woohoo!
["Everything's Not Lost" playing]
Come on, yeah ♪
Oh, oh, yeah ♪
Come on, yeah ♪
Everything's not lost ♪
[Hayley] My first reaction to
when I had cancer was I'm going to die.
And I haven't died.
And I'm not going to die.
Spaghetti!
I come back every two months now
for a check-up because I'm in remission.
That means the cancer is gone.
[man] Your hair looks a little different.
[Hayley] I just love St. Jude.
My dream is to be a nurse there.
Everything's not lost ♪
[Hayley] I applied for a job in 2019
with in-patient leukemia at St. Jude.
I just knew that this was my team,
these were my people.
- Hi, Hayley, how you doing?
- I'm good, how are you?
When I got that email that I got the job,
I could not stop crying.
I called my mom, and I was
just bawling crying, and she was like,
"Hayley, stop crying.
I don't know what you're saying."
And I was like, "I got a job!" [laughs]
That was the happiest moment of my life.
I'm Hayley. It's nice to meet you.
I heard a lot of really
cool things about you.
Getting to interact with these kids
and getting to show them
what their life can look like
after cancer,
it's introduced me to the best people.
You know, whenever I was younger,
I was a patient here.
I was treated for bone cancer.
Having cancer made me who I am.
[Hayley laughs]
And you can totally do this.
If I can do it, you can definitely do it.
[boy] Thank you for telling me.
[Hayley] Aw. It was so good to meet you.
You're awesome.
It definitely changed my life
for the better.
And then, in early January,
St. Jude sent me an email
saying they wanted to talk to me
about a unique opportunity.
And so I went into this phone call,
almost a little nervous.
I was just thinking,
"What are they gonna ask?"
There's two people on the call,
and one says to the other,
"All right, do you wanna explain it?
Blast off?"
And I remember going, "Blast off?"
And then,
they start telling me about Jared
and this all-civilian mission to space.
And they absolutely shocked me
when they asked if I wanted to go.
And I looked down, my hands were shaking,
I just couldn't believe it.
And then I thought, you know,
"Let me check with my mom."
Hayley called me, she said,
"Mom, you're never gonna believe that,
but it's true." She said,
"They want me to go to space."
I said, "What?"
And then I did ask her, like,
"Oh, well
how many astronauts are going?"
And that's when she said, "None."
And I said, "Why don't you call Hayden?"
Her brother,
who's the airspace engineer. I said,
"Let's see what Hayden says."
And Hayden has always been the space boy.
We went to NASA several times
over the years,
mostly because of his love for space.
He was at work that day,
and I called him and I was like,
"You've gotta go outside,
this is an emergency."
I go out and sit in this little, like, uh,
area that's separated from everyone
and call,
I Facetime her, have my Airpods in
so no one can hear, luckily.
She's like,
"I don't know how to tell you this,
but I'm going to space."
And I was like, "Space?"
"Wait, wait, you're going to space?
Aren't you a PA? What? What's going on?"
I was I was shocked.
I never thought in a million years
she would get the opportunity
to go to space, right?
And I said, "I wanna do it,"
and he said, "You should do it."
And, I emailed St. Jude
and I said, "I accept."
And I said, "I do have a couple questions.
Are we going to the moon?"
I was like, "Did you ask questions,
like, how high are you going up,
like, what's the plan?"
And she was like, "Yeah, I emailed them,
asked them, are we going to the moon?"
And I was like, "Hayley, I guarantee
you're not going to the moon."
And I was dying to tell people.
- How are you?
- [woman on computer] Good, how are you?
I'm good! I have some really big news,
but it's a secret.
- Yeah? You're freaking me out.
- [laughs] It's good news!
- Do y'all have any guesses?
- Okay, did you get promoted at work?
[Hayley] It's a lot bigger than that!
- Um
- What is it?
Okay. Winning a trip to outer space.
- Are you going?
- I'm going to outer space.
No, you're not.
[laughs]
- What? Hayley!
- I'm gonna be an astronaut.
I'm gonna know a freaking astronaut.
Dude, we're gonna know
- a freaking astronaut!
- And, of course, I want y'all to
- That is so cool!
- I want y'all to be there
- at the launch.
- Yes! I wanna be there
at the freaking launch!
[laughs]
Y'all, can y'all believe
I'm going to f outer space?
[woman on phone] No, like, our best
friend is going to space. What?
[laughs]
And then a few days later, I got
to Zoom with Jared for the first time.
He went through Inspiration4,
and, um, gave me all the information,
- answered all my questions.
- [man] Showed you where the moon was.
[laughs] He said
we were not going to the moon.
Apparently, people haven't
gone there in decades.
- No
- I learned that.
Yeah, so we had a great call,
I was feeling so good about it.
And the next week,
we were on our way to SpaceX.
["What A Difference A Day Makes" playing]
What a difference a day made ♪
Twenty-four little hours ♪
[Jared] Hayley obviously represents
our mission pillar of hope.
I told them, I said,
"I'm dying to tell my patients."
[Jared] Her official role in
the mission is she's our medical officer,
and who could be better qualified
than that? She's a physician assistant.
But she does bring
a lot more than that too.
She's got toughness.
She faced a circumstance
that could have ended very poorly,
like none of us have experienced,
you know, at ten years old.
She overcame that.
Mila, Liv, do you guys know
that Hayley is gonna be an astronaut?
- Yes.
- We're gonna go to space together.
- [Jared] Isn't that cool?
- Yeah.
I do think that in life, you should
say yes to opportunities that scare you.
[tour guide] Welcome
to the production floor!
This thing above me is
the old version of the Dragon Capsule,
but this is not the version
you're gonna fly in.
You're getting a Ferrari. Yeah.
[laughter]
At the bottom, are there engines
that are propelling us at?
What is the speed?
Roughly 25 times the speed of sound,
or 17,500 miles an hour.
- Oh, wow.
- Yeah. It's, uh, kinda crazy.
I think such a beautiful part
of life is you don't know
what's around the corner.
That's why you hold on to hope
that there's gonna be better days.
[Jared] This is where we're gonna
we're gonna live for three days.
[Hayley] Home sweet home!
And the difference ♪
You know, this is awesome.
is you ♪
We will head up to the training center,
where you'll get
your suit measurements taken.
They'll be the most in-depth
set of measurements you'll ever have.
- [woman] 5.6.
- [man] 5.6.
- [woman] 5.2.
- [man] 5.2.
[Hayley] Until this mission,
these NASA astronauts,
they've been perfect, god-like specimens.
Physically perfect, brilliant, strong
[man] And knee depth.
["The Times They Are A-Changin'" playing]
[Hayley] This'll probably be
the larger knee.
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown ♪
I'm going to space not physically perfect.
With this rod in my leg,
I would have immediately
been disqualified.
I'll be the first person
with a prosthetic body part
to go to space.
They don't know exactly how it's gonna go.
Now we're gonna find out.
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone ♪
For the times they are a-changin' ♪
[Kluger] The presumption for space travel
has always been,
"No, you are not qualified."
"It is up to you to prove to me
that you are qualified to go."
John Glenn
Jim Lovell
Neil Armstrong
Sally Ride
Mae Jemison
They were different from you and me.
But these folks, the Inspiration4 crew
these people are you and me.
I can't wait to meet
numbers three and four.
If you think about it, there are two
random people going about their lives
and 30 days from now,
they're gonna get fitted for a spacesuit.
This mission will open
a different dimension in who gets to fly.
And in that sense, this is one
of the most important missions ever flown.
For the times they are a-changin' ♪
[dramatic orchestral music playing]
as humanity's great taunting.
Space taunts us because
it's always there, it's always visible,
it's directly across the cosmic window.
Just on the other side of the glass
is this great expanse
that we can see, we can imagine,
but we cannot touch.
And that lure is irresistible.
Throughout human history,
the enormity of space,
the great bowl of the sky
has always inspired equal parts
reverence, awe, and mortal terror.
Space is the place
we have been striving to go
since we first looked up at the stars.
And we have actually
been going since 1957.
[newscaster] Today a new moon
is in the sky:
a 23-inch metal sphere placed in orbit
by a Russian rocket.
[JFK] We choose to go to the moon
in this decade and do the other things,
not because they are easy,
but because they are hard.
[Kluger] The competition
between the US and the Soviet Union
turbocharged the space race.
We went from a standing start,
with no human being
ever having been off the planet,
to the surface of the moon in eight years.
[Neil Armstrong] It's one small step
for man, one giant leap for mankind.
[Kluger] The Space Race 1.0
was the US and the Soviet Union.
Space Race 2.0 is suddenly
the private sector saying,
"If I have the money, and I have
the know-how, and I have the will,
I can go to space."
On July 11, we saw Richard Branson
take his space plane 50 miles high
[woman over radio] Three, two, one,
release, release, release.
[Kluger] and gave its passengers
about three and a half, four minutes
in space.
I'm an adult in a spaceship
with lots of other wonderful adults!
[man over radio] two, one.
Ignition.
[Kluger] Nine days later, Jeff Bezos
flew over 62 miles high.
They flew passengers on an 11-minute
popgun suborbital space flight.
These were not small accomplishments.
What SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission
is about to do is vastly more ambitious
and will change the game entirely.
For the first time,
four civilians are going to space.
They will orbit the Earth
for three days by themselves.
These are four non-professional astronauts
flying a spacecraft around
and around the Earth.
This is a hinge point in history,
and will kick the doors open
to space for the rest of us.
[Jared Isaacman] Inspiration4 is four
people with very different backgrounds.
Every person who's gonna join this mission
has to be able to deliver a very powerful
and inspiring story in their own right.
We represent inclusive,
diverse access to space.
There have been three
Black female American astronauts.
I will be number four.
[Hayley Arceneaux] I'll be
the youngest American to go into orbit.
Also the first pediatric cancer survivor
to go to space.
When I heard that they were offering me
a seat, I had a flood of thoughts.
There's a lot of risk.
What happens if something goes wrong?
I have a family.
What is that gonna do to her
or what's it gonna do to our daughters?
[Kluger] It is a certainty
that we will become
a multi-planet species.
And this is the next significant step
to other worlds deep beyond Earth.
And it starts now.
[dramatic orchestral music playing]
["Go Let It Out" by Oasis playing]
My name is Jared Isaacman,
I'm 38 years old.
I'm commander of Inspiration4,
first all-civilian mission to space.
Life is precocious ♪
In a most peculiar way ♪
Sister psychosis
Don't got a lot to say ♪
She go let it out ♪
She go let it out ♪
She go let it out ♪
[Jared] I do believe you only get
one crack at life.
To the extent you have the means to do so,
you have this obligation
to live life to the fullest.
You never know when
it's going to be your last day.
That kind of philosophy has taken me
from my first two flights around the world
which were both world record attempts
in 2008 and 2009.
It's taken me to flying airshows as part
of a seven-ship formation acrobatic team.
It's taken me to some interesting places
in the world, like Antarctica,
on mountain climbing expeditions.
He's definitely adventurous.
I think he would tell you
he's not a daredevil,
'cause he likes to calculate his risks,
but he is like a daredevil.
[Jared] I just know how lucky I am,
and a large part of it is because
I've had a very successful day job
running a company that's
that's afforded me these opportunities.
[reporter 1] Jared Isaacman had an idea
that is now worth
more than $50 million.
He figured out a way for businesses
to process credit cards more quickly.
[reporter 2] High school dropout
turned businessman Jared Isaacman.
You're young, you created this
great company, you make a lot of money
You know, it's about opportunity.
[reporter 3] Jared's company grew
more than 2000%.
[reporter 4] CEO Jared Isaacman
is ringing the closing bell
of the New York Stock Exchange.
Go let it out ♪
Don't let it in
Don't let it in, don't let it in ♪
Jared always, like,
kinda keeps us on our toes.
Like, usually my feelings are like,
"Oh, no. Here it comes."
[laughs] Like, what's next?
But, that's just
It's always been in him,
like, since we started dating.
[Jared] I grew up with
a pretty independent, you know, lifestyle.
If I wanted to get something done,
I was gonna do it myself.
It's a big part of, you know,
how my life ultimately shaped out.
I grew up in New Jersey, and, uh,
I think I was a horrible student,
and I wasn't, like,
happy in school, either.
So, I made the decision
I wanted to leave school early
uh, when I was 15.
There's a pretty decent age gap
between myself and my, uh,
my older siblings. They were out,
kind of enjoying their lives
and having responsibility,
and, I'm like, I gotta raise my hand
to ask permission
to use the restroom in high school.
This doesn't make sense.
So, I left high school, I took my GED.
I started the business of what
became Shift4 when I was 16.
It was like a, you know, you wake up,
you know, at 7:30, 8:00 a.m.,
then you fall asleep on the keyboard
at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.
And you just keep doing it
over and over again.
After a couple years of doing that,
I kinda remember telling my father,
like, I'm getting burned out,
like, I gotta have something else
going on in my life right now.
From a pretty young age,
I definitely took interest in aviation.
So I went to the local airport,
and I went to the flight school there.
We went up in a Cessna 172.
This is 2004 or 2005, flying.
There's no Wi-Fi. It's super peaceful.
There's no one around to bug you
and it's, I mean, it's very therapeutic.
And when I did, I was like,
"Yeah, this is gonna be a thing now."
Once you know how to fly
a single-engine propeller plane,
you wanna fly a twin-engine
propeller plane, then you wanna fly jets.
Once you started going down
that slope, it was like,
well, what comes next?
Ex-military aircraft?
Can you fly fighter jets?
And it turns out, you can.
[dramatic music playing]
And that led to airshow teams.
[dramatic music continues]
Jared and I met at an airshow
while I was flying with the Thunderbirds.
That's my background,
20 years in the Air Force flying F16s.
And there's a lot of consistencies
and comparisons to the space world.
Jared knew he was going to space.
He just didn't know who, what,
or where, when, and how.
[woman] Start.
[man 1] T minus 15 seconds.
[Jared] 2008,
based on my interest in aviation,
I got an invitation
to watch the Soyuz go up.
- [man 1] Five, four, three, two, one.
- [woman] Prime, and lift-off.
[man 1] Lift-off of the Soyuz rocket
transporting Mike Fincke,
Yury Lonchacov, and Richard Garriott
to their home in space.
[Jared] And it was amazing.
[man 2] Flight controller standing by
for contact and capture
of the International Space Station.
[Jared] And it actually took
a space tourist up, Richard Garriott
was up on that mission.
[man] Richard Garriott launched
to the International Space Station
as a self-funded private astronaut.
So that was kind of my first
exposure to the idea that maybe
we're progressing towards
a world where it won't always
just be NASA astronauts
and Russian cosmonauts
that are going into space.
[man 2] Garriott waving goodbye
for the final time.
Twelve years later,
in 2020, I was on a call,
and I was talking to people
from SpaceX, and it was not related
to me going to space,
or any human being going to space,
it was a very unrelated conversation.
I did make a comment that, um,
"Whenever you guys are ready
to really open this thing up,
just, like, keep me in mind."
And this was like a closing comment
on a phone call. It was like,
"Well, actually we might be
a lot more ready than you might think,
and if you want, you have
the opportunity to be the first."
And I was just all over it.
[man] Our mission is
[Poteet] You know when Jared
wants to share something.
The way he says something, it's like,
"Okay, he has something to share."
We were in New York for business purposes,
and we went for a run around Central Park,
and usually, he's on his earpiece,
listening to some business podcast,
um, ignores me.
But this time he was talking.
He started to allude to the space mission,
and I didn't fully grasp
what he was talking about.
He starts talking about
how he met with SpaceX,
and this opportunity has presented itself,
and I'm like, "Is he really
talking about going to space?"
"Like, there's no way."
The more and more he explained,
the more details he provided, and I'm like
"Dude, are you going to space?"
And he's like, "Yup."
And I'm like "Holy shit."
In a matter of a couple weeks,
we go from Jared telling me
he's gonna do this space thing,
to here we are at SpaceX.
It was like, "This is for reals.
Dude, you're going to space."
"That's insane."
[tour guide] Um, I thought what
we would do is start out here
with this beautiful thing,
this beautiful Falcon 9 rocket.
Um, and this rocket
is a very special rocket.
Early on, there were talks that,
like, one day he'd go to space.
I mean, you don't believe it when,
like, somebody's telling you,
but I'm like, "All right, he's got dreams"
and you kinda, like, accept them.
He broke the news.
Yeah, I think the tears
definitely came down.
All you think is, "My spouse,
my husband, father of my children,
is going to space."
We don't know the risk, right?
You just automatically think, like,
"Wow, something can happen."
He's always been adventurous, so
this was just on a different level.
Okay, now everybody knows
how to launch one, and how to land one.
You've got all the secret sauce.
Don't go make your own
rocket company, okay?
[Jared] If you look at SpaceX,
their vision right from the start is,
make humankind
a multi-planetary species, because
we got a lot of eggs in one basket here.
And it didn't go really well
for the dinosaurs.
The reason I started SpaceX
was to help make life multi-planetary,
to get humanity to Mars.
The future is vastly
more exciting and interesting
if we're a space-faring civilization
and a multi-planet species
than if we are not.
And I can't think of anything
more exciting than going out there
- and being among the stars.
- [cheers, applause]
[Musk] It's important for the future of
humanity to be a multi-planet species,
so that we better understand
the nature of the universe,
and also protects against
some calamity on Earth.
The initial model of a rocket was
that it would be a use once,
throw-away machine.
Now that's a big machine to throw away.
The Saturn V rocket cost $400 million
to build and launch,
and that was in 1960s money.
And it was used a single time.
Elon saw something different.
Elon believed we can reuse these rockets.
[crowd] Five, four, three, two, one.
Liftoff!
SpaceX was the first company
to prove out reusability of rockets.
Reusability is the holy grail.
It's a profound breakthrough.
[crowd cheers]
[man] Successful separation,
we're coming up on
This was something that was
not supposed to be able to be done.
["E-Pro" by Beck playing]
[crowd cheering]
[woman] And the Falcons have landed!
[cheering continues]
[Jared] His team that he assembled,
that believe in his vision,
have done what no one
thought was possible.
It's been six years since they first
landed a rocket on a ship.
No one else has done it.
["E-Pro" continues playing]
[Musk] SpaceX today is responsible
for about two-thirds of
all of the Earth's payload to orbit
last year.
We're the only means
by which the United States
is able to get astronauts
to the Space Station.
You start flying cargo, and then you're
launching people for the first time,
and now we've done three missions
with humans on board.
[man] Welcome back to Planet Earth,
thanks for flying SpaceX.
The next chapter's definitely
to make it more and more accessible
to regular folks.
We're gonna be flying
civilians for the first time.
[Jared] Not in my zone yet.
It's hard, there's rockets
being built around me and everything.
Inspiration4 will be another change point
in the history of space travel.
[Jared] We're calling
the mission Inspiration4.
We chose this name because the principal
mission objective is to inspire.
The number four is symbolic
for several reasons.
There will be four crew members
on this spacecraft,
and it will also be the fourth
manned mission from the United States
since the space shuttle
was retired almost a decade ago.
[woman] So, guys, from this point on,
no photos will be allowed in the facility.
[Jared] I look at it
as an immense challenge.
I'm so excited to get into the books
and start getting in the simulator
and playing around with,
uh, this great engineering marvel
you guys have created here.
[Musk] We're trying to make the dream
of space accessible to anyone.
This Inspiration4 mission
helps bring awareness
of spaceflight to a lot of people,
makes it more personal.
Hopefully, as the name suggests,
it inspires people about spaceflight.
You need pioneers like Jared
in order to have the future mission
and ultimately making
science fiction not fiction forever.
- [Jared] Morning, nice to see you.
- [man] Nice to see you.
- Good! I'm Jared.
- Sarah.
- Hey, Sarah.
- Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you as well. Cool.
[man] So, we're at a very exciting
milestone with you here today, Jared,
with our kickoff.
As you know, I'm your mission manager.
Uh, as I mentioned,
we want to talk trajectory.
For this Inspiration4 mission,
the launch will actually
happen in three stages.
The Falcon rocket is called
the Falcon 9 rocket,
for the simple reason
that it has nine powerful engines
that are sufficient to accelerate
a spacecraft to orbit.
The Falcon 9 has a first stage,
has a second stage,
and stacked on top of that,
is the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
It's the place where the astronauts live,
it's the piece that will go into orbit.
When the Falcon 9 lifts off,
it will get about halfway
to orbital altitude, and the first stage
of the rocket will separate and fall away.
The second stage of the rocket
will light and accelerate
the Crew Dragon spacecraft
up to a continuous speed of about
17,500 miles an hour.
The second stage will fall away,
and the Dragon spacecraft will be
the only part that goes into orbit.
That will be the home of the crew
for the three days they're in orbit.
In order to orbit the Earth,
you have to be going at a continuous speed
of about 17,500 miles an hour.
When it's time to come home,
they turn around
and they begin to decelerate.
And it slows them down just a little bit,
so the spacecraft will descend
into the atmosphere.
A small parachute will pop out
and slow them down,
sort of a braking parachute,
then bigger parachutes will pop out,
and then they will be traveling
at just a few miles an hour,
and they will gently splash down
in the Atlantic Ocean.
[mission manager] All right.
Shall we? Nice touch to it.
- Who Who's that?
- [all laughing]
[Jared] Looks like
he knows what he's doing.
[mission manager] That guy
Jared is, um, an awesome person
to be a partner
on this first all-civilian flight.
He has a ton of experience
in flight as a pilot,
um, and does a lot of wild piloting stuff.
He also just has a great attitude.
He's a complete supporter
of our mission at SpaceX
to go multi-planetary,
and he's, uh, really
a very humble partner,
a very knowledgeable partner, as well.
[Ericson] Jared's not the guy
that's just showing up and saying,
"Hey, launch me to space."
He is fully committed and involved,
kind of the perfect guy for this.
He's got a ton of flight experience.
He has the technical ability
to understand.
[Jared] I just care that it has
that new Dragon smell.
[Reed] Yeah, it'll be
this is, this is, yeah.
What do they call it? Certified pre-owned.
[all laughing]
Jared understands that exploration
is all about pushing boundaries.
It's about going
where you haven't been before.
So that would be like keeping
an altitude roughly below 420 kilometers,
and I don't think there's any particular
or any major benefit in going above ISS.
All right, any questions?
I think it would be interesting
to maybe further explore
the option above ISS.
[Jared] I totally agree, and I guess,
just curious on Dragon Certification,
since that does go a touch above that.
Intuitively, going slightly above
would not present a problem,
but going above will start
to stretch our margins.
And there may be other problems
that I'm not aware of in other subsystems.
[man] Yeah, it's not one particular
thing, it's just opening Pandora's box.
The question really is,
"What are you looking for?"
"What's the driver
for that higher altitude?"
You know, when people have asked us
about just what we're trying to accomplish
with Inspiration4, if there is
a Jetsons' world we're all living in
and people are hopping in
their spaceship and cruising around,
at some point, it's gonna go a heck
of a lot farther than the Space Station.
So, assuming that it could be mitigated,
then, I think it is symbolic in that it is
that kind of pushing
that one step a little bit forward,
for everything else, you know, to follow.
Yeah.
This is gonna send a statement,
this is the first.
And the first comes with
a great deal of responsibility, like,
what message do we wanna send with this?
No, and that's a really fair point. And
that's part of the point of this mission.
- Yeah, we'll
- [Jared] Cool.
We'll talk more about
this one offline internally.
- [Ericson] Yeah.
- [Jared] We appreciate it
- [Ericson] For sure.
- [man] It's definitely huge.
[Ericson] Typically, a NASA mission
inserts into a 200-kilometer orbit,
but now, we're gonna go
about 575 kilometers high,
well above
the International Space Station.
If we are going to go to Mars,
taking a stride in that direction,
it is vitally important.
I think it speaks to, uh, really,
the intent of the mission, which is,
hey, to now inspire, you know,
and you inspire by doing things
that haven't been done before.
- Cool, man.
- [Ericson] See you next week.
- Yeah, see you in a week.
- All right. See you, brother.
[Ericson] What impressed me
about Jared was
that it is a heartfelt passion of his,
that he needs to do this right.
That he's setting a precedent
for all the missions to come.
[interviewer] There's been
a good amount of backlash
- to the so-called billionaires in space.
- Sure.
The criticism is
we have enough problems on Earth,
why are we spending time, energy,
and money getting off of Earth?
What's your response to that?
Yeah, I mean,
I don't think we should spend
I think we should spend
the majority of our resources
solving problems on Earth,
um, like 99% plus
of our, you know, economy should be
dedicated to solving problems on Earth,
but I think, maybe,
something like 1% or less than 1%,
could be applied
to extending life beyond Earth.
Think about a future where
we're a space-faring civilization,
and a multi-planet species, that's an
an exciting, inspiring future.
If life is just about problems, I mean,
why what's the point of living?
Space is not inexpensive,
like, we all know that.
What thoughts people
can potentially have on it
is, you know,
it's a billionaire going on a joyride,
the privileges of wealth,
to be able to go and
disregard all the, you know, uh,
that could be done here on Earth.
For me, like, anytime I've undertaken
any of these adventures in life,
there has to be some offset.
We're not gonna do this
if we can't make a huge difference
for the problems
the world's faced with today,
or we don't earn the right
to go up into space.
We gravitated right to St. Jude's
Children's Research Hospital.
[reporter] Isaacman says
this mission is much more
than fulfilling a childhood dream.
It's also a massive fundraising effort
to raise
an astonishing $200 million
for cancer research
at St. Jude Children's Hospital.
And he's writing the first personal check
for $100 million.
You definitely don't get
into my position in life
unless a couple of things
went your way at the right time.
And then you think about, well,
the extreme other end of the spectrum
is the families where nothing went right,
they got dealt a horrible hand in life,
um, and a lot of these kids in,
you know, don't even grow up
and have a chance
to experience even 1/100th, uh
of what I've had the opportunity
to experience, and it's just
it's an imbalance that's that sucks.
It's terrible.
We should do something about it.
We live? Everyone can hear us?
Good, thumbs up? All right.
I wanna welcome the two most
significant organizations
to this mission coming together
for the first time:
SpaceX, obviously, you have no means
to get to outer space
without all the great innovations and
capabilities you brought together,
and St. Jude's Children's
Research Hospital.
And why are we doing this?
To kick off what hopefully
is the most successful fundraising
and awareness campaign in history.
If we are going to eventually live
in a world
where everybody is capable of going out
and journeying amongst the stars,
then we'd better fight
childhood cancer along the way.
The other thing is, like,
the rest of the crew members
have to represent the good
we're trying to do with the mission.
We're not gonna go up
with a bunch of fishing buddies.
It's not gonna work that way.
Like, every person
who's gonna join this mission
has to be able to deliver
a very powerful and inspiring story
in their own right.
And that's where we came up
with our mission pillars.
Yeah, it might make sense
just to explain, like,
that seat selection process
and everything, you know?
We wanted a crew member to represent hope,
a crew member to represent generosity,
and a crew member to represent prosperity.
And there's my seat
to represent leadership.
We are going out and identifying
people to occupy those seats
that really represent
the best of humanity.
So, for our crew member
that represented hope,
we're teamed up so heavily with St. Jude's
Children's Research Hospital,
I can't think of anyone better
to represent the mission's spirit of hope
than a former cancer survivor who grew up
to become a healthcare professional.
And we went to St. Jude and said,
"You know, surely you might know
somebody who, you know,
who fits this profile."
We've already selected one person,
uh, who's a great humanitarian,
a first responder, you know,
a childhood cancer survivor,
treated at St. Jude, grew up
to become a healthcare professional,
and now is still in the fight at St. Jude
again helping other kids beat it.
My name is Hayley Arceneaux,
I'm 29 years old, and I'm from Louisiana,
but I live in Memphis.
- Thank you.
- [clerk] All right, have a great one.
[Hayley] Thank you.
I grew up in a really sweet,
small town called St. Francisville
in Louisiana.
[Colleen] She was very friendly,
and she loved meeting new people.
I'd always be like,
"Don't talk to strangers,
don't go home with strangers,"
I thought she would think,
"That might be a nice adventure
to go on" and I was afraid of that.
That's how friendly she was.
[Hayley] And I just had
this really happy childhood.
I was in dance, gymnastics,
and tae kwon do.
I was in tae kwon do alongside my dad.
We would go to practice
twice a week together.
And at age ten,
I'd just gotten my black belt,
and then, I was having pain in my knee,
and the doctor said, you know,
probably an overuse injury
from tae kwon do.
I took some over-the-counter meds,
stayed out of tae kwon do for a week,
felt better, um,
but then the pain started getting worse.
Well, I vividly remember the day
that I found the lump.
We were walking to the car
from school, and she was kind
of limping in the parking lot,
and I was like, "What's the matter?"
And she said,
"My knee hurts, my knee hurts."
So I said,
"I'll look at it when we get home."
She was making pancakes. She said, "Let me
look at your knee you were mentioning."
She looked at it and then she gasped.
And I remember she went over
to the fire where the pancakes were
and turned it off.
She kept saying,
"How long have you had that?"
And she pointed to this knot on my knee,
like right above my knee.
[Colleen] We went to the doctor
the next morning.
I snuck out in the hall
with the doctor, and I said,
"Could this be something serious?"
And the doctor just hugged me.
She gave me this big bear hug,
and, at that point, I just knew.
She ended up being diagnosed
with osteosarcoma,
which is bone cancer.
We returned home,
and my dad immediately looked up
osteosarcoma online
and found the St. Jude website.
In order to go to St. Jude,
they have to have a protocol
that they're studying that type
of cancer, which they were.
Hayley and I flew to Memphis.
I walked in and they had
the reception desk.
And I said, "I'm here.
My daughter is Hayl"
and I just burst into tears.
I couldn't even finish saying her name.
And I remember,
I just kind of stepped back,
and trying to compose myself,
and I feel these arms around me.
And it was the receptionist,
Miss Penny, and she whispered in my ear,
she said, "It's gonna be okay,
it's gonna be okay."
"You're part of the St. Jude family now.
We're going to take care of her,
and we're gonna take care of you too."
[Hayley] I underwent
intensive chemotherapy for almost a year,
and, I remember I asked a lot of questions
about losing my hair.
I was so worried about that.
And I remember being so worried
that my dog wouldn't recognize me.
It all started with losing little pieces
on my pillowcase.
Then it started coming out in chunks.
- I think we've been in this room before.
- We've been in all the rooms.
Yes, we've been in every room.
[Colleen] She had 12 rounds
of very intensive chemotherapy.
Her counts would drop, she wouldn't
have any immunity, and, of course,
everything made her sick.
[Hayley] I had several infections,
I needed numerous transfusions.
Midway through, I had surgery
to remove the part of my bone
that had the tumor on it.
- [Hayley] Come in.
- Hello! Hi, Hayley, how are you?
- [Hayley] Good. Here. It's numb.
- It starts to right here is numb
- But I can feel all of my foot.
- Okay.
When they removed the part of my bone
that was affected by the tumor,
they removed the growth plate.
And St. Jude had this cutting-edge
technology where they were able
to put in a prosthetic
that could be expanded
without the need for additional surgery.
And, they did that.
They expanded it five times.
Mom, I think I'm always gonna be
a centimeter longer in this leg.
Well, you're only three-fourths
of a centimeter longer right now.
- Oh!
- Yeah.
[Hayley] I was a tough kid.
I didn't cry much.
I tried to keep a really good attitude.
Hayley made an unbearable
situation bearable.
I'm trying to lift my leg
like my right leg, but, it's
I can't do that yet.
[Colleen] I had to give her
a shot every night,
and, I'd be like, "I'm sorry,"
and she'd be like, "That's okay,"
like, "Don't worry about it, it's okay."
And I always wanted to be very strong
for her to not have to do that
for her not to have to carry me along.
You're almost ready to run a race.
[Barnwell] Hayley, from day one,
wanted to make every day
better for everybody.
[Hayley] I would go up to all the donors
who were giving blood, and I would say,
"Thank you for donating.
If I didn't get blood and platelets,
I would shrivel up."
They even made me a little
St. Jude name badge that said
"Gratitude Administrator."
And I took my role really seriously,
like, I would tell people,
"I am a St. Jude employee."
She would say time and time again,
"I cannot wait to come back here
and help."
I remember thinking, "She'll do it,
if she survives this, she'll do it."
- [Hayley] My scans are clean?
- Yes.
- Yay!
- Woohoo!
["Everything's Not Lost" playing]
Come on, yeah ♪
Oh, oh, yeah ♪
Come on, yeah ♪
Everything's not lost ♪
[Hayley] My first reaction to
when I had cancer was I'm going to die.
And I haven't died.
And I'm not going to die.
Spaghetti!
I come back every two months now
for a check-up because I'm in remission.
That means the cancer is gone.
[man] Your hair looks a little different.
[Hayley] I just love St. Jude.
My dream is to be a nurse there.
Everything's not lost ♪
[Hayley] I applied for a job in 2019
with in-patient leukemia at St. Jude.
I just knew that this was my team,
these were my people.
- Hi, Hayley, how you doing?
- I'm good, how are you?
When I got that email that I got the job,
I could not stop crying.
I called my mom, and I was
just bawling crying, and she was like,
"Hayley, stop crying.
I don't know what you're saying."
And I was like, "I got a job!" [laughs]
That was the happiest moment of my life.
I'm Hayley. It's nice to meet you.
I heard a lot of really
cool things about you.
Getting to interact with these kids
and getting to show them
what their life can look like
after cancer,
it's introduced me to the best people.
You know, whenever I was younger,
I was a patient here.
I was treated for bone cancer.
Having cancer made me who I am.
[Hayley laughs]
And you can totally do this.
If I can do it, you can definitely do it.
[boy] Thank you for telling me.
[Hayley] Aw. It was so good to meet you.
You're awesome.
It definitely changed my life
for the better.
And then, in early January,
St. Jude sent me an email
saying they wanted to talk to me
about a unique opportunity.
And so I went into this phone call,
almost a little nervous.
I was just thinking,
"What are they gonna ask?"
There's two people on the call,
and one says to the other,
"All right, do you wanna explain it?
Blast off?"
And I remember going, "Blast off?"
And then,
they start telling me about Jared
and this all-civilian mission to space.
And they absolutely shocked me
when they asked if I wanted to go.
And I looked down, my hands were shaking,
I just couldn't believe it.
And then I thought, you know,
"Let me check with my mom."
Hayley called me, she said,
"Mom, you're never gonna believe that,
but it's true." She said,
"They want me to go to space."
I said, "What?"
And then I did ask her, like,
"Oh, well
how many astronauts are going?"
And that's when she said, "None."
And I said, "Why don't you call Hayden?"
Her brother,
who's the airspace engineer. I said,
"Let's see what Hayden says."
And Hayden has always been the space boy.
We went to NASA several times
over the years,
mostly because of his love for space.
He was at work that day,
and I called him and I was like,
"You've gotta go outside,
this is an emergency."
I go out and sit in this little, like, uh,
area that's separated from everyone
and call,
I Facetime her, have my Airpods in
so no one can hear, luckily.
She's like,
"I don't know how to tell you this,
but I'm going to space."
And I was like, "Space?"
"Wait, wait, you're going to space?
Aren't you a PA? What? What's going on?"
I was I was shocked.
I never thought in a million years
she would get the opportunity
to go to space, right?
And I said, "I wanna do it,"
and he said, "You should do it."
And, I emailed St. Jude
and I said, "I accept."
And I said, "I do have a couple questions.
Are we going to the moon?"
I was like, "Did you ask questions,
like, how high are you going up,
like, what's the plan?"
And she was like, "Yeah, I emailed them,
asked them, are we going to the moon?"
And I was like, "Hayley, I guarantee
you're not going to the moon."
And I was dying to tell people.
- How are you?
- [woman on computer] Good, how are you?
I'm good! I have some really big news,
but it's a secret.
- Yeah? You're freaking me out.
- [laughs] It's good news!
- Do y'all have any guesses?
- Okay, did you get promoted at work?
[Hayley] It's a lot bigger than that!
- Um
- What is it?
Okay. Winning a trip to outer space.
- Are you going?
- I'm going to outer space.
No, you're not.
[laughs]
- What? Hayley!
- I'm gonna be an astronaut.
I'm gonna know a freaking astronaut.
Dude, we're gonna know
- a freaking astronaut!
- And, of course, I want y'all to
- That is so cool!
- I want y'all to be there
- at the launch.
- Yes! I wanna be there
at the freaking launch!
[laughs]
Y'all, can y'all believe
I'm going to f outer space?
[woman on phone] No, like, our best
friend is going to space. What?
[laughs]
And then a few days later, I got
to Zoom with Jared for the first time.
He went through Inspiration4,
and, um, gave me all the information,
- answered all my questions.
- [man] Showed you where the moon was.
[laughs] He said
we were not going to the moon.
Apparently, people haven't
gone there in decades.
- No
- I learned that.
Yeah, so we had a great call,
I was feeling so good about it.
And the next week,
we were on our way to SpaceX.
["What A Difference A Day Makes" playing]
What a difference a day made ♪
Twenty-four little hours ♪
[Jared] Hayley obviously represents
our mission pillar of hope.
I told them, I said,
"I'm dying to tell my patients."
[Jared] Her official role in
the mission is she's our medical officer,
and who could be better qualified
than that? She's a physician assistant.
But she does bring
a lot more than that too.
She's got toughness.
She faced a circumstance
that could have ended very poorly,
like none of us have experienced,
you know, at ten years old.
She overcame that.
Mila, Liv, do you guys know
that Hayley is gonna be an astronaut?
- Yes.
- We're gonna go to space together.
- [Jared] Isn't that cool?
- Yeah.
I do think that in life, you should
say yes to opportunities that scare you.
[tour guide] Welcome
to the production floor!
This thing above me is
the old version of the Dragon Capsule,
but this is not the version
you're gonna fly in.
You're getting a Ferrari. Yeah.
[laughter]
At the bottom, are there engines
that are propelling us at?
What is the speed?
Roughly 25 times the speed of sound,
or 17,500 miles an hour.
- Oh, wow.
- Yeah. It's, uh, kinda crazy.
I think such a beautiful part
of life is you don't know
what's around the corner.
That's why you hold on to hope
that there's gonna be better days.
[Jared] This is where we're gonna
we're gonna live for three days.
[Hayley] Home sweet home!
And the difference ♪
You know, this is awesome.
is you ♪
We will head up to the training center,
where you'll get
your suit measurements taken.
They'll be the most in-depth
set of measurements you'll ever have.
- [woman] 5.6.
- [man] 5.6.
- [woman] 5.2.
- [man] 5.2.
[Hayley] Until this mission,
these NASA astronauts,
they've been perfect, god-like specimens.
Physically perfect, brilliant, strong
[man] And knee depth.
["The Times They Are A-Changin'" playing]
[Hayley] This'll probably be
the larger knee.
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown ♪
I'm going to space not physically perfect.
With this rod in my leg,
I would have immediately
been disqualified.
I'll be the first person
with a prosthetic body part
to go to space.
They don't know exactly how it's gonna go.
Now we're gonna find out.
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone ♪
For the times they are a-changin' ♪
[Kluger] The presumption for space travel
has always been,
"No, you are not qualified."
"It is up to you to prove to me
that you are qualified to go."
John Glenn
Jim Lovell
Neil Armstrong
Sally Ride
Mae Jemison
They were different from you and me.
But these folks, the Inspiration4 crew
these people are you and me.
I can't wait to meet
numbers three and four.
If you think about it, there are two
random people going about their lives
and 30 days from now,
they're gonna get fitted for a spacesuit.
This mission will open
a different dimension in who gets to fly.
And in that sense, this is one
of the most important missions ever flown.
For the times they are a-changin' ♪
[dramatic orchestral music playing]