An all-civilian crew streaked into space atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday on the first privately funded, non-government trip to orbit, a historic three-day flight devoted to raising $200 million for St.

"Inspiration4 is go for launch," Isaacman radioed flight controllers moments before liftoff.

EDT, lighting up the early evening sky as the booster thundered away from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center atop 1.7 million pounds of thrust.

That's higher than anyone has flown since the last shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009.

From that lofty perch, Isaacman and his Inspiration4 crewmates will enjoy unrivaled 360-degree views of Earth and deep space through a clear, custom-built dome, or cupola, in the nose of the capsule that has replaced the docking mechanism used for NASA flights to the space station.

Isaacman said the flight carried the crew "right to the doorstep of an exciting and unexplored frontier where few have come before and many are about to follow.

Asked before launch if anyone in the crew had any trepidation about riding a rocket to space, Isaacman said SpaceX founder Elon Musk gave the crew "his assurances that the entire leadership team is solely focused on this mission and is very confident.

While billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos made headlines earlier this summer when they spent a few minutes in weightlessness during up-and-down sub-orbital flights, the Inspiration4 crew will spend three days orbiting the Earth before returning to splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean Saturday night.

"Space sickness is one of the interesting things that this mission is going to explore, just like all the NASA missions that have gone before," said Todd Ericson, a former Air Force test pilot who is helping manage the Inspiration4 mission for Isaacman

He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches

Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia."