• Jared Isaacman led the first private spacewalk during the SpaceX mission Mission Dawn Polaris.
• The mission broke NASA’s Earth orbit record and tested new Starlink communications technology.
• He spoke with BI about his experience, what felt different on his second space mission, and the challenges of living off-world.

Jared Isaacman’s second trip to space was different.

The billionaire CEO of payments company Shift4 made history two months ago when he opened the hatch of a SpaceX rocket and entered space. This moment marked the very first walk into private space.

“There’s nothing separating you from the void of death other than the single-panel visor,” Isaacman told Business Insider.

This single-panel visor was part of SpaceX’s new extravehicular activity spacesuits — which Isaacman says “basically become your spaceship — that the four-person crew tested during its almost five-day Polaris Dawn mission. If anything goes wrong, Isaacman and his crew member, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillishad only reserved about two hours of oxygen.

“Everything in this environment is trying to kill you,” Isaacman said. “The radiation, the lack of a habitable atmosphere, there is debris moving at many times the speed of bullets.”

The hatch remained open for 25 minutes, Isaacman said, during which he and Gillis each spent about eight minutes outside the capsule. Time passed quickly, he said, but they were able to complete a test matrix of three mobility demonstrations of the suits.

Isaacman likened observing the unknown darkness of space to traveling abroad in the 1400s, when humans feared perhaps sailing to the ends of the Earth or encountering some sort of mythical sea monster.

He said that being outside the EspaceX The Dragon capsule was “very different” looking through its window, with an intensity of light coming from Earth that “no video can capture.”

“You have all these additional senses that merge together and you get, I think, a better appreciation of how hostile and unwelcoming the space is,” Isaacman said.

The spacewalk itself, which took place at altitudes up to 460 miles above Earth, went as planned. The Polaris Dawn crew conducted approximately 38 scientific and research experiments to test the impact of radiation on the human body, contributing to SpaceX’s goal of learning more about long-duration human missions to Mars and beyond.

“The goal was to learn a lot about the mobility of the suit and also the thermal regulation of the suit and large temperature variations,” Isaacman said.

The SpaceX mission, Isaacson’s second trip to space with the rocket company co-founded by Elon Muskrequired flying through risky radiation belts.

It surpassed NASA’s record for highest Earth orbit and went further into space than humans have traveled since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The crew also transmitted the first violin performance in space with Starlink technology.

In a Netflix docuseries about Isaacman first SpaceX mission, Inspiration4his wife describes worrying about what could go wrong. This time around, with Polaris Dawn, those concerns seemed to improve, Isaacman said.

“I think my family and my wife in particular were much more motivated and enthusiastic than the first time,” he told BI.

Isaacman attributed part of this increased ease to a successful first mission.

The team prepared extensively for Polaris Dawn, spending hundreds of hours testing pressure suits. The SpaceX suits were tested in a vacuum chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, which Isaacman said was important to ensure none of the materials would “create a toxic environment or explode.”

Reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, even with SpaceX’s preparation and training, remained a point of nervousness. If there is a problematic amount of damaged debris on the heat shield or thermal protection systems, there is “no backup plan,” Isaacman said.

The CEO said that while he and his family recognized the risks, they remained convinced that it was worth it.

He’s going back – and expects breakthroughs to be ‘imminent’

Once back on Earth, Isaacman underwent approximately three days of medical tests before largely returning to business as usual.

He’s traveled extensively, visiting facilities and doing debriefings, and estimates he’s only slept in his bed four or five times since his space trip.

Isaacman has retained his role as CEO, which he says helps make his work with St. Jude and SpaceX possible. Isaacman funded both Polaris Dawn and its previous mission with SpaceX. The first mission raised more than $240 million for St. Jude and was named Inspire4 in an effort to inspire support for the hospital.

But his stay in space is not yet over… the Polaris program is designed to be three missions planned over the next six to nine years, Isaacman said. He said he expects more progress in suit development on the second Polaris mission and that the third will be the first crewed flight of SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket system ever built, designed to fulfill Musk’s dreams of colonizing Mars.

Isaacman shares the SpaceX co-founder’s view that humans will be multi-planetary – and he said the technological means to make that possible are “just around the corner.” He anticipates Fully reusable spacecraft becoming a tangible reality over the next decade and launching frequently, whether weekly or monthly. That could lead to all kinds of space-related experimentation, including asteroid mining or establishing bases on the Moon or Mars, Isaacman said.

However, the challenges don’t stop with forming an off-world base: You have to make sure the astronauts maintaining it stay alive and sane, he said.

“In reality, having a civilization that can succeed and thrive in space is a very different set of problems,” Isaacman said.

About half of the people who go to space get sick, he said. After landing, Isaacman said one of his SpaceX crew members suffered a minor case of spaceflight-associated neuromuscular syndrome, which affects vision. Although the symptoms subsided soon after, he cited this as an example of some of the health risks facing people venturing into space.

There was also never any surgery or childbirth in space, nor the psychological challenges of living away from Earth, Isaacman said.

“You’re going to be in a bubble or living in a cave, or underground on Mars the whole time you’re there,” Isaacman said. “We’ll never get better than that. So there are a lot of things to resolve. »

Although humans haven’t quite figured it out yet, Isaacman sees a future where humans walk on Mars.

“We just have to proceed with caution and make sure we do it right,” Isaacman said. “And if we do, we have much to learn that can change the course of humanity’s trajectory.”