For the first time in 60 years of human spaceflight, a rocket has blasted into orbit with no professional astronauts on board, only four tourists. Video / SpaceX
Four space tourists safely ended their trailblazing trip to orbit Saturday with a splashdown in the Atlantic off the Florida coast.
Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean just before sunset, not far from where their chartered flight began three days earlier.
The all-amateur crew was the first to circlethe world without a professional astronaut.
Passengers of Inspiration4 in the Dragon capsule on their first day in space. Photo / AP
The billionaire who paid undisclosed millions for the trip and his three guests wanted to show that ordinary people could blast into orbit by themselves, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took them on as the company's first rocket-riding tourists.
"Your mission has shown the world that space is for all of us," SpaceX Mission Control radioed.
"It was a heck of a ride for us ... just getting started," replied trip sponsor Jared Isaacman, referring to more private flights on the horizon.
SpaceX's fully automated Dragon capsule reached an unusually high altitude of 585km after Wednesday night's liftoff. Surpassing the International Space Station by 160km, the passengers savoured views of Earth through a big bubble-shaped window added to the top of the capsule.
Chris Sembroski, one of four passengers aboard the SpaceX capsule, reacts after emerging from the capsule. Photo / AP
The SpaceX capsule carrying four people splashes down in the Atlantic. Photo / AP
The four streaked back through the atmosphere early Saturday evening, the first space travellers to end their flight in the Atlantic since Apollo 9 in 1969. SpaceX's two previous crew splashdowns - carrying astronauts for Nasa - were in the Gulf of Mexico.
Within a few minutes, a pair of SpaceX boats pulled up alongside the bobbing capsule. It was hoisted on the recovery ship where the hatch was opened. The four were due to have medical checks before going to Kennedy Space Centre by helicopter for a reunion with their families
This time, Nasa was little more than an encouraging bystander, its only tie being the Kennedy launch pad once used for the Apollo moonshots and shuttle crews, but now leased by SpaceX.
Isaacman, 38, an entrepreneur and accomplished pilot, aimed to raise US$200 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Donating US$100 million himself, he held a lottery for one of the four seats. He also held a competition for clients of his Allentown, Pennsylvania payment-processing business, Shift4 Payments.
In this combination of split screen images taken from SpaceX video, passengers aboard a SpaceX capsule, left, react as the capsule, right, parachutes into the Atlantic Ocean. Photo / AP
Joining him on the flight were Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a St. Jude physician assistant who was treated at the Memphis, Tennessee hospital nearly two decades ago for bone cancer, and contest winners Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington, and Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator, scientist and artist from Tempe, Arizona.
Strangers until March, they spent six months training and preparing for potential emergencies during the flight, dubbed Inspiration4. Most everything appeared to go well, leaving them time to chat with St. Jude patients, conduct medical tests on themselves, ring the closing bell for the New York Stock Exchange, and do some drawing and ukulele playing.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with four private citizens onboard, lifts off. Photo / AP
Arceneaux, the youngest American in space and the first with a prosthesis, assured her patients, "I was a little girl going through cancer treatment just like a lot of you, and if I can do this, you can do this."
They also took calls from Tom Cruise, interested in his own SpaceX flight to the space station for filming, and the rock band U2′s Bono.
Even their space menu wasn't typical: Cold pizza and sandwiches, but also pasta Bolognese and Mediterranean lamb.
Before beginning descent, Sembroski was so calm that he was seen in the capsule watching the 1987 Mel Brooks' film "Spaceballs" on his tablet.
Nearly 600 people have reached space - a scorecard that began 60 years ago and is expected to soon skyrocket as space tourism heats up.
Benji Reed, a SpaceX director, anticipates as many as six private flights a year, sandwiched between astronaut launches fo Nasa. Four SpaceX flights are already booked carry paying customers to the space station, accompanied by former Nasa astronauts. The first is targetted for early next year with three businessmen paying US$55 million apiece. Russia also plans to take up an actor and film director for filming next month and a Japanese tycoon in December.
Customers interested in quick space trips are turning to Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. The two rode their own rockets to the fringes of space in July to spur ticket sales; their flights lasted 10 to 15 minutes.
