Welcome to Axios Recap, sponsored by J.P. Morgan Chase. I'm Naomi Shaven, and I'm filling in for Dan.

Today is Tuesday, March 30th. COVID cases are up. The percentage of U.S. adults who say they won't get vaccinated is down, and we're focused on a space mission called Inspiration 4.

Last month, my colleague Miriam Kramer was on the show.

She writes the Axio Space newsletter, and she was talking about a space mission that will involve only regular people.

There will be no professional astronauts on this spaceflight.

When it takes off this fall, it will orbit Earth and then return. They'll be traveling

on a spacecraft provided by SpaceX, and the mission is being led by a tech entrepreneur named

Jared Isaacman. The three other crew members are a volunteer from St. Jude, someone chosen by

Raffle, and the winner of a competition. It's part eccentric billionaire stunt,

part fundraiser for St. Jude, and huge part a critical test of what the next chapter of spaceflight

could look like. And today, the mission finally revealed the full civilian crew.

Meanwhile, there are two other missions that have popped up.

Dear Moon, a space tourism project funded by a Japanese billionaire that seeks everyday people

as crew members, and Space Hero, a reality TV contest that will send one person to space.

If opening space travel up to untrained passengers seemed to be

around the corner and the reality TVification of space seemed just beyond it, well, we've officially

reached both. I'll talk to Miriam about all of this in 15 seconds.

We're joined now by Miriam Kramer, author of the Axios Space newsletter.

Welcome back, Miriam. Let's start with a quick recap. What is so unique about this mission?

This mission is the first all-civillion trip to space. So it's the first mission that will have only sort of normal people, average everyday folks, getting to fly to space without an astronaut,

without the backing of a government. It's very much sort of private sector driven, driven by

these four individuals that have been chosen to fly. When you were here last time, you talked about what this mission would mean for space tourism,

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