HUNTSVILLE – It is said the 40th anniversary is the ruby jubilee and U.S. Space & Rocket Center CEO Dr. Kimberly Robinson was plenty jubilant last Friday.
Robinson accepted the largest single donation in the Space Center’s history – a $10 million gift from Shift4 founder and CEO Jared Isaacman. The money will go toward a 40,000-square-foot Inspiration4 Skills Training Center to support Space Camp.
Isaacman said his experience at Aviation Challenge at Space Camp as a 12-year-old changed his life. He wants more kids to have that same, only enhanced, opportunity.
“What you are seeing here is a lot of young minds,” said Isaacman. “They are going through programs that will someday be on future missions, so we are proud to make this $10 million donation, but as far as I’m concerned, it isn’t even close to being enough.
“Space Camp may be located in Huntsville, Alabama, but it is as asset for the entire nation.”
Isaacman is not only an entrepreneur and corporate CEO who is pushing the boundaries of commerce innovation at Shift4, but he is a philanthropist; accomplished pilot who holds several world records and has flown in more than 100 air shows; and a commercial astronaut who, in September 2021, commanded Inspiration4, the world’s first all-civilian mission to orbit the earth, spending three days aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
“This is an incredible gift,” Robinson said. “We have much to celebrate about our past but today we are looking to our future and the next 40 years.
“And we can do that because of partners who invest on our vision and mission and we have such a partner in Jared and his crew.”
Named for that historic mission, the Inspiration4 will be a state-of-the-art facility that brings many Space Camp and Aviation Challenges’ immersive, scenario-themed activities under one roof and it updates the Space Camp program overall. The hanger-style building will include space and aviation simulators, an indoor pool, a netted drone space, classrooms, and a challenge course for training the next generation of astronauts, pilots and engineers.
Gracing its entrance will be L-39 Black Diamond plane on display, also donated from Isaacman’s collection.
Once operational, the facility will extend water and other weather-dependent outdoor activities year-round and enable Space Camp to increase the number of trainees who can attend each year outside the summer season.
Isaacman and crewmates from Inspiration4 were on hand at the presentation.
Like Isaacman, Chris Sembroski was a Space Camp alum. He served as mission specialist, senior analytics engineer for Lockheed Martin, and is a former Space Camp counselor.
Hayley Arceneaux was the crew’s medical officer and a physician’s assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. She is also the youngest American to fly into orbit and the first pediatric cancer survivor to do so.
Dr. Sian Proctor is the first black female mission pilot and a geoscience professor.
The astronauts were inducted into the Space Camp Hall of Fame during a formal dinner event that night at the Davidson Center.
The Inspiration4 mission raised more than $250 million for St. Jude, the Memphis-based pediatric cancer research hospital that does not charge the families of children for their treatment.
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