American tech billionaire and high-school dropout Jared Isaacman made history on September 12, becoming the world’s first private spacewalker.
Isaacman paid an estimated $200 million to fellow billionaire Elon Musk for all four seats aboard SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn, securing the chance to spend five days in orbit and 10 minutes in the vacuum of space.
At 15, Isaacman left high school to work as a software developer for a payment processing company. He used that experience a year later to launch Shift4 Payments, now worth $7.4 billion.
Polaris Dawn launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with Isaacman commanding a crew that included retired US Air Force pilot Scott Poteet, and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon.
On September 11, the crew reached a peak altitude of 1,400 km, the farthest humans have traveled from Earth since the Apollo missions to the Moon in 1969.
In orbit, violinist Sarah Gillis performed “Rey’s Theme” from Star Wars: The Force Awakens alongside orchestras on Earth.
Later, Isaacman made history as the first private spacewalker, becoming the 264th person to ever conduct a spacewalk, remarking, “Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world.”
Polaris Dawn was not Isaacman’s first space mission. In 2021, he led and financed the first private, all-civilian team to orbit Earth.
After completing a series of maneuvers, Isaacman returned to the Dragon spacecraft to make way for mission specialist Sarah Gillis who became the 265th spacewalker.
The crew returned to Earth on September 15, landing in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas shortly after 3:37 a.m. local time (8:37 a.m. BST).
