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SpaceX tourists talk to Tom Cruise from orbit

SpaceX tourists talk to Tom Cruise from orbit

"Inspiration4" crew

Four space tourists orbiting the Earth in a SpaceX capsule at 17,500 miles per hour talked to movie star Tom Cruise on Friday and provided a live update about life aboard the spacecraft.

The space tourism mission by Elon Musk's SpaceX blasted off from Florida on Wednesday for a three-day voyage that is to end with a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean at 4:06 pm Pacific time on Saturday.

Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux and Chris Sembroski, spoke with Cruise, who is hoping to make a film in space, from the vessel on Friday.

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Last year, former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced a film project starring Cruise to be shot in zero gravity on board the International Space Station. However, no details have been delivered yet about the project, which would be done in collaboration with SpaceX.

A SpaceX webcast of the launch showed the crew strapped into the pressurised cabin of their gleaming white SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, wearing their helmeted black-and-white flight suits.

The crew includes a billionaire e-commerce executive and three other private citizens. This is the first all-civilian crew.

The capsule carrying the crew was perched atop company's reusable two-stage Falcon-9 rocket. The Crew Dragon, fitted with a special observation dome in place of its usual docking hatch, reached orbit almost 10 minutes after the 8:03 pm EDT blastoff.

It marked the debut flight of SpaceX owner Elon Musk's new orbital tourism business, and a leap ahead of competitors likewise offering rides on rocket ships to customers willing to pay a small fortune for the exhilaration - and bragging rights - of spaceflight.
Isaacman has paid an undisclosed sum to fellow billionaire Musk to send himself and his three crewmates aloft. Time magazine has put the ticket price for all four seats at $200 million.

The mission, called Inspiration4, was conceived by Isaacman mainly to raise awareness and support for one of his favorite causes, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a leading pediatric cancer center in Memphis, Tennessee.

Inspiration4 is aiming for an orbital altitude of 360 miles (575 km) above Earth, higher than the International Space Station or Hubble Space Telescope, and the farthest any human will have flown from Earth since the end of NASA's Apollo moon program in 1972, according to SpaceX.