NASA astronauts prepare for launch of first all-civilian crew

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Sept 14 Reuters - The four would be citizen astronauts poised to ride a SpaceX rocket throughout the globe as the first all-civilian crew launched into orbit said on Tuesday they were eager for liftoff on the eve of their flight, feeling only the good kind of jitters.

I was just worried that this moment in my life would never come. Let's do it, said Sian Proctor, 51, a geoscience professor, artist and lifelong space enthusiast who was a finalist in the NASA astronaut candidate program in 2009 before she was cut.

She also disclosed she and her flightmate received a telephone call from one of her personal heroes, former First Lady Michelle Obama, who wish them well, an honor she said would stay with me the rest of my life. The Inspiration 4 quartet are due for liftingoff as early as 8 p.m. of Wednesday, 0000 GMT from launch complex 39 A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for an orbital flight expected to last about three days before splashdown.

Proctor and her crewmates - billionaire e-commerce executive and jet pilot Chris Sembroski, 42, physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux, 29, and aerospace data engineer Jared Isaacman, 38 - took reporters' questions at pre-launch briefing inside a SpaceX hangar a little more than 24 hours before launch time.

Behind them, visible in the distance through the hangar's open doors, stood the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule designed to transport them to a targeted orbital altitude of 360 miles 575 km over the Earth - higher than the International Space Station.

This is far beyond the inaugural astro-tourism flights carried out by SpaceX rivals Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin this summer that carried their respective billionaire founders - Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos alongside for the ride.

Those two mini-suborbital trips, where high enough to allow their crews to experience a few moments of microgravity, were over in a matter of minutes.

The high orbital flight planned for Inspiration 4 carry greater risks, including more exposure to radiation in space. But the crew members professed great confidence in SpaceX, the private space company founded by billionaire Elon Musk.

Isaacman, founder and chief executive of electronic financial services company Shift 4 Payments Inc. is the mission's originator and benefactor, having paid Musk an undisclosed but presumably enormous amount to fly all four crew members into orbit.

Isaacman joined on a pre-flight check-in call on Tuesday and gave us his assurances that the entire leadership is exclusively focused on this mission, Musk told reporters when asked about pre launch nerves. No jitters, just excited to get started. Arceneaux, a childhood bone cancer survivor who now works with young lymphoma and leukemia patients in St. Jude Children's Research Center in Memphis, Tennessee, where the Inspiration 4 mission was designed largely to promote, said she was so excited. Any jitters are the good kind, she added. Joining Tuesday's event was at least one retired NASA astronaut, Catherine Cady Coleman, 60, a veteran of two space shuttle missions who spoke up to wish the Inspiration 4 crew well, telling them: We want to welcome you to the family.