First all-civilian crew bound for orbit launches aboard SpaceX rocket ship

A SpaceX rocket ship blasted off from Florida on Wednesday carrying a billionaire e-commerce executive and three less-wealthy private citizens he chose to join him in the first all-civilian crew ever launched on a flight to Earth orbit.

The quartet of amateur space travellers, led by the American founder and chief executive of financial services firm Shift4 Payments Inc, Jared Isaacman, lifted off at 8.03pm EDT (0003 GMT Thursday) from the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral.

A SpaceX webcast of the launch showed Isaacman, 38, and his crewmates - Sian Proctor, 51, Hayley Arceneaux, 29, and Chris Sembroski, 42 - strapped into the pressurised cabin of their gleaming white SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, wearing their helmeted black-and-white flight suits.

The capsule roared into the Florida sky perched atop one of the company’s reusable two-stage Falcon 9 rockets and fitted with a special observation dome in place of its usual docking hatch.

The flight, the first...