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Will space missions include more average people?
In today’s newsletter, the countdown to Space-X's launch; award-winning ‘tiny wonders’; how to get to sleep earlier; way too close to a tornado ... and bringing back the woolly mammoth?
This article is an adaptation of our weekly Science newsletter that was originally sent out on September 15, 2021. Want this in your inbox? Sign up here.
By Victoria Jaggard, SCIENCE executive editor
It sounds like the kind of purely hypothetical question you ask as an icebreaker at a cocktail party: If you could take three people with you to spend three days orbiting Earth, who would you pick?
That’s essentially what billionaire Jared Isaacman got to do for the Inspiration4 mission, which is slated to launch as soon as later tonight carrying the world’s first entirely civilian crew on a commercially built rocket. Isaacman spent an undisclosed amount to charter a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and blast himself and three crewmates to an altitude of 360 miles—higher than the orbit of the International Space Station. The four-person team (pictured above during altitude
