Jared Isaacman is not a professional astronaut, but by the end of the year the young billionaire will have shot around the Earth multiple times at the helm of a space mission made up entirely of tourists.
The tech entrepreneur will blast off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, in what will be the first all-civilian mission into Earth’s orbit, which he will command and pay for himself.
The mission, named Inspiration4, “is the first step in a world where everybody can go and journey among the stars,” Isaacman said with an enormous grin as he explained the project to AFP in front of SpaceX’s headquarters in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne.
The CEO of payments processing firm Shift4 Payments, which he founded at age 16 in his basement, is an experienced pilot, qualified to fly military aircraft, and already holds a world record for circumnavigating the globe in a light jet in less than 62 hours.
In 2012, he even founded his own company that trains pilots for the US military force, Draken International.
“I’ve been a space and aviation enthusiast since as long as I can remember,” the 37-year-old said. “When I was in kindergarten, I remember looking at picture books of the space shuttle. I told my kindergarten teacher that ‘Someday I’m going to go to space.’”
If all goes as planned, his childhood dream will come true in the last quarter of this year, according to SpaceX.
And the magical voyage is something he plans to share.
Isaacman is to be joined by three other novice astronauts for the multi-day journey — including one lucky winner of a drawing — aboard the same model of Dragon spacecraft that carried four astronauts to the International Space Station in November 2020.
– ‘Everyday people’ –
“Probably the most exciting part of this mission is that we are opening up this crew selection process to everyday people,” Isaacman said.
“You have folks walking around today that don’t realize in 30 days…
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