The Guardian 9/19/2021
Four-person crew asked for the public’s help in reaching fundraising target of $200m for the children’s charity St JudeElon Musk surprised his first all-private crew of space tourists with a welcome home gift after their trailblazing trip to orbit ended on Saturday night: a $50m donation to the children’s charity St Jude.
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The billionaire SpaceX founder tweeted soon after their Atlantic ocean splashdown off the Florida coast that he was gifting the money towards the mission’s stated goal of raising $200m for the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee.
“Count me in for $50m,” Musk wrote, in response to a tweet from the four-person crew that they were: “Happy. Healthy. Home.” The crew asked for the public’s help in reaching their fundraising target.
Jared Isaacman, the sponsor and commander of the mission known as Inspiration4, paid SpaceX undisclosed millions for the trip and threw in the first $100m for charity himself.
Isaacman, 38, an entrepreneur and pilot, said he wanted to show that ordinary people could blast into orbit by themselves. He held a lottery for one of the four seats and a competition for clients of his Allentown, Pennsylvania, payment-processing business, Shift4 Payments, for another.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/19/elon-musk-spacex-donation-charity-st-jude
