Who is the first billionaire to perform a spacewalk?

MEXICO CITY (apro).- Jared Isaacman is the first astronaut, not financed by any government, to perform a spacewalk, as part of the “Polaris Dawn” mission, which he himself finances, in the Crew Dragos capsule of the SpaceX firm, but who is this multimillionaire?

Isaacman was born in New Jersey in 1983 and in 1999, at the age of 16, he founded Shift4 Payments, a payment processing company that – according to his own statements – he started in his parents’ basement together with his friend Taylor Lauber and, since 2020, has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

As of today, Isaacman and Lauber hold the positions of CEO and president of the company, respectively. The astronaut has an estimated net worth of $2 billion, as of Friday’s closing, according to Forbes magazine.

Isaacman has a keen interest in flight, which led him to study at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and take classes to pilot airplanes and even set a world record by circumnavigating the globe in a light aircraft, according to reports. His passion led him to found Draken International, a company that provides tactical fighter aircraft for air services, with the largest private fleet of military aircraft in the world, according to Forbes.

In 2021, the civilian astronaut carried out his first space mission, in a SpaceX capsule –owned by billionaire Elon Musk–, as part of the first civilian crew to orbit the Earth. According to Time magazine, Isaacman paid around $200 million for the four seats on the ship on that occasion.

The crew of the “Polaris Dawn” mission, aboard the “Resilience” capsule, is made up of the millionaire, his friend Scott “Kidd” Poteet – a retired Air Force pilot – and Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, two engineers who work for SpaceX.

The walk was carried out by Isaacson, followed by Gillis, at 700 kilometres from Earth, but the other two crew members did not carry out this activity. According to the mission programme, on Friday the capsule reached a maximum altitude of 1,400 km, where the four passengers are exposed to high radiation and will carry out up to 40 satellite communication experiments, before returning to the planet on Saturday.