So I had NASA TV pulled up on my second monitor this morning instead of actually working, because Axiom Mission 1 launched at 11:17am Eastern from Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A, and I could not look away.
Quick version for anyone who missed it: four guys went to the International Space Station today, and none of them are professional astronauts employed by a government space agency. Well, three of them arent. The commander is Michael López-Alegría, who used to be a NASA astronaut and now works for Axiom Space, the company that put this whole trip together. The other three paid their way. Larry Connor is a real estate guy from Ohio. Mark Pathy is a Canadian businessman. Eytan Stibbe is an Israeli former fighter pilot turned investor. They rode up in a Falcon 9 with a Crew Dragon capsule called Endeavour, the same capsule that flew Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley back in 2020, which I think is a nice touch honestly, reusing hardware that already has a name and a history instead of just slapping a new serial number on it.
The number that keeps getting thrown around is $55 million a seat. Ive seen that figure in a few places now and Im inclined to believe it's roughly right, though Axiom hasnt exactly published a price list. Compare that to what youve been hearing out of Blue Origin the last year or so, where you pay to go up for eleven minutes and come back down having barely left the atmosphere. This is a different category of thing entirely. These guys are staying on ISS for about eight days, doing actual research experiments, not just floating around taking photos for Instagram (though Im sure there will be plenty of that too).
I want to be clear that Im not 100% sold on the "private astronaut" framing though. Connor and Pathy and Stibbe all trained for months, sure, and theyre doing legitimate science while up there, but they also all happen to be extremely wealthy men who could write a check for a number most of us will never see in our bank accounts even once. Its progress, I guess, that space isnt purely a government-employee club anymore. Its also very obviously still a rich-person club, just a slightly different flavor of it. Both things can be true at once and I dont think you need to pick a side to find the launch itself genuinely cool.
And it was cool. The stream cut to the onboard camera right after second stage separation and you get that view of the capsule against black, Earth curving away underneath, and I dont care how many times Ive watched a launch at this point, that shot still gets me a little. My coffee went cold because I forgot about it for twenty minutes, which almost never happens.
Docking with the station is supposed to happen tomorrow, something like 20 hours after launch, and then theres the whole business of hatch opening and the crew getting welcomed aboard by the folks already up there. I dont know if Ill watch that part live, depends what time it actually lands on the schedule, these things always slip a little.
The bigger context here, and Im not going to pretend I have some unique insight into it, is that this is basically Axiom laying groundwork for their own commercial space station down the line. ISS isnt going to be up there forever. NASA has said as much. Companies like Axiom want a foothold in low Earth orbit before that transition happens, and flights like this one are as much about proving the business model as they are about the science payload. Whether that model actually works long term, whether enough millionaires and companies want to pay tens of millions of dollars for a week in orbit to sustain a whole private station, I genuinely dont know. Feels like a bet right now more than a sure thing.
Anyway. Back to actual work. Or at least back to pretending to do actual work while I keep half an eye on the NASA feed for the rest of the afternoon.