Who is Jared Isaacman, the first billionaire spacewalker?

Isaacman, along with SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, briefly experienced the vacuum of space to test the company’s new spacesuits during the five-day Polaris Dawn mission. Although the pair did not technically leave the spacecraft, it was the first time that non-professional astronauts from a private company have conducted a spacewalk. Most spacewalks are conducted by government-funded professional astronauts who enter space usually to repair the International Space Station. 

“Back home we have a lot of work to do, but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman said as he looked down on the planet from space.

But who is Isaacman, and how did he, among all the space-curious billionaires, become the first to make history with his spacewalk? 

The 41-year-old CEO was born in New Jersey and dropped out of high school at the age of 15. He instead opted to take the GED exam, because he was a “horrible student,” according to the Netflix series Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space. 

He made his fortune through Shift4 Payments, a payment processing company he founded in 1999 at the age of 16. The company processes more than $260 billion in payments yearly and has more than 200,000 customers, according to its website. In 2011, he also founded Draken International, a defense firm that supplies tactical fighter aircraft to the U.S. military and its allies. Isaacman himself has a net worth of $1.9 billion, according to Forbes.

Isaacman has always had his head in the clouds. From a young age he was interested in aviation and he took his first flying lessons in 2004. In 2008 and 2009, he set records for circumnavigating the globe in a light jet. The CEO has more than 7,000 hours of flight experience, and has flown in over 100 airshows with the Black Diamond Jet Team, a civilian aerobatic display team.

In recent years, Isaacman has taken his ambitions beyond the stratosphere. In 2021, he bankrolled and then led Inspiration4, the first all-civilian mission to space. The four-person crew spent three days in space and flew higher than the International Space Station and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope at their peak, Time reported. The mission helped raise $240 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Isaacman also helped fund the Polaris Dawn mission that landed him in the history books Wednesday, but did not disclose how much he contributed, Bloomberg reported. On the fifth day of the mission, the four members of the Polaris mission will return to Earth, landing with a splash in the ocean before being recovered by SpaceX.