SpaceX and tech CEO’s pitch: Donate $10 to charity, win a trip into orbit

A prototype of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, as seen in a reflection on a window, is displayed at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne in 2018. In a new chapter of commercial spaceflight, SpaceX plans to launch a crew of only private astronauts into orbit — the world’s first such mission. The crew would travel aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut capsule, which ferried two cadres of NASA astronauts to the International Space Station last year. “Things necessarily start off real expensive because it’s new technology at low volume, low production rate, so we actually need people who are willing and able to pay the high prices initially to make it affordable long term for everyone.” Isaacman did not say how much he’s paying for his flight — including the price of the other three passengers’ seats — but said the money he plans to raise for St. Jude and the good he hopes the mission will accomplish will “far exceed the cost of the mission itself.” Isaacman, 37, said he plans to donate $100 million to St. Jude and hopes that other donors — incentivized by the sweepstakes — will, combined, more than match that amount. Isaacman said he and his future crewmates will undergo commercial astronaut training at SpaceX that is “virtually identical” to the training curriculum used by the NASA astronauts who rode SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule to the space station.