At the age of 5, Jared Isaacman decided he wanted to go to space. By 16, he had already started his entrepreneurial journey, and after a series of successes, this 41-year-old American billionaire made history once again this week by leading a space mission.
On Thursday, September 12, he led a crew of four aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft named “Polaris Dawn” to the highest altitude humans have reached since the last Apollo mission in 1972. They successfully completed the world’s first commercial spacewalk.
Isaacman floated in space outside the SpaceX capsule for 10 minutes. Traditionally, spacewalks had been exclusive to government-trained astronauts, but Isaacman and his crew are private individuals.
As the CEO and founder of payment processing company Shift4 Payments, Isaacman led a groundbreaking mission for SpaceX in 2021 – the world’s first all-civilian orbital mission.
According to Forbes, the funding for both private space missions came from Isaacman, whose net worth is estimated at $1.9 billion.
Isaacman, a skilled pilot, set the world record for the fastest global flight in a light jet in 2009. He has long advocated for expanding the private space industry, envisioning a future where “everyone can embark on interstellar adventures.”
“After spending time in space, looking back at Earth, it truly appears to be a perfect world from here,” Isaacman said as he gazed at the shimmering Earth below after exiting the space capsule on Thursday.
“For me, my life has been incredibly lucky,” Isaacman told Bloomberg before the spacewalk. “You know – starting a business in the basement at 13 just wanting to buy pizza on weekends turned into a fairly substantial empire.”
Isaacman started working in IT at a payment processing company at 16, leading him to drop out of high school. Shortly after, he decided to start his own company, simplifying customer experiences by allowing business owners to fill out applications online.
With a $10,000 check from his grandfather as seed money, Isaacman set up shop in the basement of his parents’ home in New Jersey, purchasing some computers and phones.
As of Friday, Shift4 is valued at $7.4 billion and went public in June 2020.
“At that age, you couldn’t possibly imagine the company being worth billions,” Isaacman said, recalling the early days when he and eight employees would have lunch in the basement, sharing knowledge, successes, failures, and learning together.
Today, the company’s headquarters in Center Valley, Pennsylvania spans 75,000 square feet and employs over 2,000 people nationwide.
With a passion for aviation since he was young, Isaacman started taking flying lessons in his twenties as a way to relieve stress.
In 2009, he set a world record flying a Cessna Citation CJ2 around the globe in less than 62 hours, about 20 hours faster than the previous record holder. Three years later, he founded Draken International, a company that trains student pilots for the U.S. Air Force, selling it to the Blackstone Group for a “seven-figure sum” in 2020, according to Forbes.
Driven by the evolving private space industry, Isaacman aimed to elevate his flying hobby to new heights. He began reaching out to SpaceX and other private aerospace companies around 2007, hoping for collaboration opportunities.
The chance finally arrived in 2021 when he commanded a four-person crew spending three days in orbit for SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission. During this week’s five-day space voyage, he put on a spacesuit and ventured out of the spacecraft to complete the world’s first private spacewalk.
“Polaris Dawn” is the first of three manned space flights under Isaacman’s private “Polaris” program. These missions aim to test SpaceX’s technology, including how to handle cosmic radiation and the effects of space vacuum on the human body, to eventually send humans deeper into space in the future.
The third and final “Polaris” mission, scheduled for 2026, will initially transport NASA astronauts from lunar orbit to the lunar surface as part of NASA’s Artemis program.