All-amateur astronaut crew returns from orbit

After three days in orbit, SpaceX’s Inspiration4 flight returned safely Saturday with its crew of four civilians – a billionaire who paid for the trip, a physician assistant who survived childhood cancer, a professor who was once a finalist to become a NASA astronaut and a data engineer who was selected from among donors to St. Jude’s Children's Research Hospital. It was the first “space tourist” flight without a professional astronaut aboard. But, the crew did train for six months before boarding the highly advanced and automated spacecraft.

Class discussion: If you had a chance to fly a spacecraft into orbit, would you? Why or why not? Do you think you may ever realistically get a chance? Besides paying for the flight, billionaire Jared Isaacman, 38, also contributed $100 million to St. Jude’s. What do you think of Isaacman, a high school dropout who made his fortune with a tech company he started at 16? What about physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a childhood St. Jude’s patient who now works at the hospital? Do you draw any inspiration from this flight and its crew of amateurs?