This week, four private space travelers flying around Earth’s poles spent their first day in space, full of vomit, according to a man paying for the trip.
“The first few hours at microgravity weren’t comfortable,” Chun Wang, a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur, said in an update to X’s FRAM2 mission.
FRAM2 was launched by the Kennedy Space Center on Monday night, sending SpaceX’s crew Dragon Resilience into space for the fourth time. The 3-5-day mission brings humans into polar orbit for the first time.
The Wang said that the ride into space is much smoother than expected, noting that only the last minute before the engine is cut off in two stages.
“I barely felt the G-force. I honestly felt like I was just another flight,” he posted. “I imagined it would feel like I was in an elevator that suddenly fell, but that feeling never came.”
Private SpaceX Mission launches humans on the first polar orbit
The king said Tyler, a stuffed polar bear that acts as a zero gravity indicator, was the one that informed him that he was in space when he was floating.
“We may not have realised that we were already weightless,” he posted. “I think if you’re tightly tied to a seat bucket, the transition becomes less noticeable.”
As long as you adapt to the universe, the king said that the emotions that stir the stomach are different from those felt on Earth.
“I felt that it was different from motion sickness in a car or in the ocean,” he posted. “You can still read it on your iPad without making your iPad worse. But even a little water can shake your stomach and cause vomiting.”
The spacecraft was equipped with cupola windows that gave us a 360-degree view from the hatch ahead, a view that the king and his crew weren’t ready until the second day in orbit.
“No one asked who opened the cupola on the first day. We were all focused on managing motion sickness,” he said.
The King, an avid adventurer who visited the land Arctic and Antarctic, paid a private sum for his trip. He took three Australian friends and fellow adventurer Eric Phillips, Giannick Mikkelsen from Norway, and Laveer Lodge in Germany.
He said the quartet instead spent a movie night watching his launch and everyone went to bed earlier than planned.
“We all slept very well. By the second morning, I was completely refreshed. All traces of motion sickness are gone,” he said.
The King posted the video on Wednesday. When the crew finally opened the cupola.
Hello, Antarctica.
Unlike previously expected, from 460 km from above, it is pure white only and human activity is invisible. pic.twitter.com/i7jawfyzw2
– Chun (@satofishi) April 2, 2025
“Hello, Antarctica. Unlike previously expected, from 460 km above, it is pure white and cannot be seen in human activity,” he posted.
The crew also conducted other experiments on the second day, including the first X-rays in space.
The Splashdown date has not been announced by SpaceX yet, but it is the first time that a crew has landed off the coast of California.
SpaceX’s previous flights and humans with 16 crew members and their humans all landed off the coast of Florida. The company moved its business to the West Coast after an incident involving fragments from discarded propulsion modules that crashed on land.
FRAM2 was SpaceX’s second human space flight of the year, following its Crew 10 mission in March and followed the International Space Station mission.
The company has at least two on its calendar this year. Next is the private Axiom Space AX-4 mission scheduled earlier than May on a short trip to the space station.
They then head to the space station in mid-July to NASA’s Crew-11 mission, mitigating Crew-10.
Original issue: April 2, 2025 10:45am EDT
