I hadn't thought of Fram2 this way

Stephen Greene, "Vodkapundit" at PJ Media, surprised me with an observation about the Fram2 polar orbiting mission that never occurred to me.  It's so obvious when you read that it really resonates.  

"...To boldly go where no man has gone before" launched every episode of Star Trek that I watched in reruns as a kid, but Monday night I watched as two men and two women did it for real aboard a Crew Dragon spaceship that put human beings into a polar orbit for the first time ever.

Son of a biscuit, he's right and we've just been calling it an orbital mission, just like all the other privately-run manned missions to orbit that we've seen.  Except it really isn't.  Nobody has ever done a mission that orbited over one of the poles every half orbit. 

He then goes on to say a few words about the crew members and each of their backgrounds before adding another poignant note:

None are former fighter pilots, NASA astronauts, or government employees of any kind. All show the kind of daring that would make Captain James T. Kirk proud.

Even dedicated space buffs were a bit taken aback when news of Fram2 reminded us that human beings had never flown a polar orbit before. You might wonder why, but Fram2's five-day mission has a stellar rationale. 

What's the rationale?  Nobody has made big deal about it, but while they're bringing a lot equipment for various scientific experiments, perhaps the most important experiment is that they're going to be exposed to the Van Allen belts - through holes over the magnetic north and south poles.  Nobody has been exposed to these belts since the Apollo program, and even the Apollo astronauts avoided the worst doses by transiting quickly through the Belts.  

Fram2 won't fly through the most dangerous parts of the Van Allen Belts but they'll fly through them every orbit, enough to gather data. 

For those of us who grew up in the start of the "space age," watched Mercury, Gemini and Apollo as they happened, this is turning into the space age we always expected to see, just delayed until later.  Still, while we don't know how much they're spending on this mission and the things they're doing, we know that it's all being funded by one man, Chun Wang.  I know he has been called a billionaire, and haven't seen an estimate of his net worth, but between Wang and Jared Isaacman with his Polaris program missions, it's clear that someone who can spread around a few hundred million dollars doesn't have much trouble getting into space if they want to.  Those with less to spread around now can take suborbital spaceflights, like Blue Origin's New Shepard flights. 

To let Stephen Greene have the last words:

It won't be long before millionaires will enjoy short stays aboard luxury space stations in low Earth orbit, just like the ISS but much more comfy. After that, maybe a brief "spacation" won't cost much more than a trip to Disney World. 

The complete whiteness of Antarctica is seen from SpaceX's Dragon during the first-ever human polar orbit during the Fram2 mission. (image credit Fram2/Chun Wang via News13 in Central Florida)