TWO SPACE FANS GET SEATS ON BILLIONAIRE'S PRIVATE FLIGHT

A billionaire’s private SpaceX flight filled its two remaining seats this week with a scientist-teacher and a data engineer whose college friend actually won a spot but gave him the prize.

- 

The new passengers: Sian Proctor, a community college educator in Tempe, Arizona, and Chris Sembroski, a former Air Force missileman from Everett, Washington. They will join flight sponsor Jared Isaacman and another passenger for three days in orbit this fall.

Isaacman also revealed some details about his Inspiration4 mission, as the four gathered at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. He’s head of Shift4 Payments, a credit card-processing company in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and is paying for what would be SpaceX’s first private flight while raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

Their SpaceX Dragon capsule — currently parked at the International Space Station for NASA — will launch no earlier than midSeptember, aiming for an altitude of 335 miles (540 kilometers). That’s 75 miles (120 kilometers) higher than the International Space Station and on a level with the Hubble Space Telescope.