Aerospace company SpaceX announced plans on Monday for the first all-civilian mission to space, NBC News reported.

A four-person crew led by Jared Isaacman, the founder and CEO of payment processing company Shift4 Payments, will be aboard SpaceX’s Dragon aircraft. According to SpaceX, the flight is estimated to launch sometime in the fourth quarter of this year. 

“When you’ve got a brand new mode of transportation, you have to have pioneers,” the company’s founder and CEO Elon Musk said in an interview with NBC Nightly News. “Things are expensive at first, and as you’re able to increase the launch rate, increase the production rate, refine the technology, it becomes less expensive and accessible to more people,” he added.

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Though private citizens have flown to space before as ‘space tourists’, they have typically been on missions with trained NASA astronauts or Russian cosmonauts. Isaacman’s flight will be the first time a crew consisting fully of private citizens will go to space. The crew members are set to undergo training by SpaceX, including mission simulations for emergency preparedness.

According to Isaacman, the mission, titled ‘Inspiration4’, is “the realization of a lifelong dream and a step towards a future in which anyone can venture out and explore the stars.”

The expedition is part of a humanitarian initiative to raise money for St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. In addition to giving $100 million to St Jude, Isaacman will donate the three other seats in the Dragon spacecraft to specially chosen crewmembers.

During the mission, the Dragon spacecraft will circle Earth once every 90 minutes as part of a customised flight path, as per SpaceX. 

Musk said he hopes these ‘early joyrides’ lay a solid foundation for more space tourism in the future. 

“It’s like when America went to the moon in ’69 — it wasn’t just a few people, humanity went to the moon,” he said, NBC News reported. “We all went there with them. And I think it’s something similar here,” Musk added.