A tech billionaire has successfully completed the first private spacewalk, taking place hundreds of miles above Earth on Thursday, a high-stakes achievement previously limited to professional astronauts.
Jared Isaacman, a New Jersey native and entrepreneur, collaborated with SpaceX to test the company’s new spacesuits during his chartered flight. The spacewalk also involved SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, who ventured out once Isaacman was safely back inside the spacecraft.
Isaacman, 41, is the CEO and founder of Shift4, a credit card processing company. He has not revealed the amount he invested in this flight, which is the first of three missions in a program he calls Polaris, with this particular mission named Polaris Dawn. In 2021, during SpaceX’s first private flight, he was accompanied by contest winners and a cancer survivor.
Prior to Thursday, only 263 individuals from 12 different countries had accomplished a spacewalk, a journey that began with the Soviet Union’s Alexei Leonov in 1965, followed shortly after by NASA’s Ed White.
His journey into aviation began in 2004 when he started flying lessons, and in 2009, he set a world record for flying around the globe in a small aircraft.
Isaacman earned a bachelor’s degree in professional aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2011 and is a married father of two daughters.
According to Forbes, Isaacman founded Shift4 in his parents’ basement in New Jersey in 1999 when he was just 16 years old. Today, Shift4 processes payments for about one-third of restaurants and hotels in the United States.
He took the company public in June 2020 and reportedly owns 38% of its stock. In 2011, he established Draken International, a defense company that operates the world’s largest fleet of private military aircraft and provides training for Air Force pilots. He later sold a majority interest in this company for a substantial sum.
Isaacman’s net worth is estimated at $1.9 billion.