Billionaire to conduct private spacewalk with Musk’s SpaceX
Tech mogul Jared Isaacman, commanding 4-person Polaris Dawn mission, will become first non-professional astronaut to perform complex mission; won’t say how much he paid for it
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — A daredevil billionaire rocketed back into orbit Tuesday, aiming to perform the first private spacewalk and venture farther than anyone since NASA’s Apollo moonshots.
Unlike his previous chartered flight with spaceX, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, 41, shared the cost this time. The project included developing and testing brand-new spacesuits to see how they’ll hold up in the harsh vacuum.
If all goes as planned, it will be the first time private citizens conduct a spacewalk, but they won’t venture away from the capsule. Considered one of the riskiest parts of spaceflight, only professional astronauts have performed spacewalks since the former Soviet Union popped open the hatch in 1965, closely followed by the United States. Today, astronauts at the International Space Station routinely perform spacewalks.
Isaacman, with a pair of SpaceX engineers and a former US Air Force Thunderbirds pilot, launched before dawn aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. The spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday, midway through the five-day flight.
But first, the passengers are shooting for way beyond the International Space Station — an altitude of 870 miles (1,400 kilometers), which would surpass the Earth-lapping record set during NASA’s Project Gemini in 1966. Only the 24 Apollo astronauts who have flown to the moon have ventured farther.
The plan is to spend 10 hours at that height — filled with extreme radiation and riddled with debris — before reducing the oval-shaped orbit by half. Even at this lower 700 kilometers (435 miles), the orbit would eclipse the space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope, the highest shuttle astronauts have flown.
All four wore SpaceX’s spacewalking suits because the entire Dragon capsule will be depressurized for the two-hour spacewalk, exposing everyone to the dangerous environment.
Isaacman and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis will take turns briefly popping out of the hatch. They’ll test their white and black-trimmed custom suits by twisting their bodies. Both will always have a hand or foot touching the capsule or attached support structure that resembles the top of a pool ladder. There will be no dangling at the end of their 3.6-meter (12-foot) tethers and no jetpack showboating. Only NASA’s suits at the space station come equipped with jetpacks, for emergency use only.
Pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX’s Anna Menon will monitor the spacewalk from inside. Like SpaceX’s previous astronaut flights, this one will end with a splashdown off the Florida coast.
“We’re sending you hugs from the ground,” launch director Frank Messina radioed after the crew reached orbit. “May you make history and come home safely.”
Isaacman replied: “We wouldn’t be on this journey without all 14,000 of you back at SpaceX and everyone else cheering us on.”
At a preflight news conference, Isaacman — CEO and founder of the credit card processing company Shift4 — refused to say how much he invested in the flight. “Not a chance,” he said.
SpaceX teamed up with Isaacman to pay for spacesuit development and associated costs, said William Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX vice president who once headed space mission operations for NASA.
“We’re really starting to push the frontiers with the private sector,” Gerstenmaier said.
It’s the first of three trips that Isaacman bought from Elon Musk, who owns spaceX. Isaacman made the purchase two and a half years ago, soon after returning from his first private SpaceX spaceflight in 2021. Isaacman bankrolled that tourist ride for an undisclosed sum, taking along contest winners and a childhood cancer survivor. The trip raised hundreds of millions for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
Spacesuit development took longer than anticipated, delaying this first flight, dubbed Polaris Dawn, until now.
Training was extensive. Poteet, the Air Force pilot, said it rivaled anything he had experienced during his military career.
As SpaceX astronaut trainers, Gillis and Menon helped Isaacman and his previous team — as well as NASA’s professional crews — prepare for their rides.
“I wasn’t alive when humans walked on the moon. I’d certainly like my kids to see humans walking on the moon and Mars, and venturing out and exploring our solar system,” said Isaacman before liftoff.
Poor weather caused a two-week delay. The crew needed favorable forecasts not only for launch, but for splashdown days later. With limited supplies and no ability to reach the space station, they had no choice but to wait for conditions to improve.
