First privately funded spacewalk
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The American billionaire Jared Isaacman has led the first-ever privately funded space-walk - and not just for fun, as the mission is testing innovative spacesuits designed to protect humans on Mars.
Also in the programme: we hear from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, after six of its staff were among 18 killed in an Israeli air strike on one of its schools in Gaza that was being used as a shelter; and after the rock star Bon Jovi talks down a suicidal woman, what is the best way to persuade someone not to take their own life?
(IMAGE: Jared Isaacman on the first private space-walk / CREDIT: SpaceX/PA Wire
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:07.0 | Coming to you live from London, I'm Nola McGovrin. |
| 0:10.0 | This is Jared now egressing through the forward hatch of Dragon Resilience. |
| 0:17.0 | So the first views of the first ever commercial spacewalk. |
| 0:22.0 | I have a feeling the crowd is about of the first ever commercial spacewalk. |
| 0:23.0 | I have a feeling the crowd is about to go wild. |
| 0:29.0 | Well, it was a long way to go to test a spacesuit and contact lenses, but what an image. |
| 0:35.2 | Jared Isakman, the American billionaire emerging from the nose of a spacecraft, |
| 0:40.6 | into the vacuum of space, his luminous white space suit back dropped by Earth 700 |
| 0:47.0 | kilometers away and he was then followed by his mission specialist Sarah Gillis |
| 0:51.0 | on the first ever privately funded |
| 0:53.4 | spacewalks. The Polaris Dawn mission, it was funded by |
| 0:57.2 | Isaacman who is as I mentioned a billionaire. It blasted off in SpaceX crew |
| 1:02.3 | dragon spacecraft. It had four non-professional astronauts on board, it still does, and it has broken so many |
| 1:09.1 | barriers, not least taking humans further than any program since the Apollo missions in the 1970s. |
| 1:15.1 | Looking forward to chatting with Professor Catherine Haymans, Astronomer Royal for Scotland. |
| 1:19.9 | Good to have you with us, Professor. |
| 1:21.3 | Oh, hi Nula. I have had the best last few hours just watching this unfold. |
| 1:27.4 | I mean, SpaceX sure know how to put on a show. They gave us full access to this spacewalk you could see the |
| 1:36.0 | astronauts inside the dragon spacecraft watching it depressur seeing Jared, unlatch the hatch and then eventually climb up and out into space. |
| 1:49.0 | And the best thing, Nula, was that there was a helmet camera inside his helmet so you could see what he was seeing as he |
| 1:56.2 | stepped out in this beautiful vision of our planet Earth below him. It was just breathtaking and my congratulations to the Polaris Dawn teen and |
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