It’s one small step for a billionaire…
Pilot and philanthropist Jared Isaacman is poised to make history Tuesday morning as he blasts off as leader of the Polaris Dawn space mission.
Leaving from Cape Canaveral, Florida, he is part of a four-person crew attempting to go further from planet Earth than any space-tourist before them in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. He is also poised to become the first private citizen to complete a “spacewalk”.
If the space thrusters do their jobs correctly, Isaacman, 41, will ascend 17 miles beyond where any astronaut who did not continue on to the moon managed.
Isaacman previously self-funded a three-day space trip in 2021 which was estimated by Florida Today to have cost as much as $200 million.
While he’s not given a figure for the current five-day venture, it’s believed to have cost even more.
The plan is for him and a three person crew – comprised of Scott “Kidd” Poteet (a former Air Force pilot and an Isaacman pal) plus SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis – to reach an altitude of some 870 miles.
Though the trip qualifies as space tourism, it is being undertaken in conjunction with Elon Musk and his SpaceX company, who are also using it as an opportunity for research.
It is different from any other mission of its kind in terms of hours in space, elements of danger and what will be accomplished.
“They’ll be going to the Van Allen radiation belt, which protects the earth from radiation,” Douglas Messier, formerly the editor of Parabolic Arc, which covered space exploration, told The Post.
Explaining that the area is loaded with high energy particles, from which the craft has been carefully designed to offer protection, he added, “They’ll be measuring exposure [to radiation], which will be useful for going to the moon and Mars.”
Topping it off, on day three of the voyage, according to Messier, Isaacman will do another space tourism first. He and Gillis will open the hatch of the Crew Dragon capsule they are travelling in and be exposed to the outer space environment.
Though it’s been hyped as an outer space walk, it is in fact what former NASA astronaut and author of “The Ordinary Spaceman: From Boyhood Dreams to Astronaut,” Clayton Anderson characterized to The Post as “going to the edge of the capsule; they are not really going to walk. But it’s going to be an awesome view.”
At that point, leaning out of the top of the craft, but still tethered to it, Anderson explained, “The spacesuit is your space ship. You’re in an environment without oxygen. The temperature is 250 degrees Fahrenheit if you are in sunlight and negative-250 degrees Fahrenheit if sunlight is blocked by the earth. It’s risky. The spacesuit must protect you from all of that.”
The Extravehicular Activity spacesuits used on this mission were specially built by SpaceX with new innovations to make it all possible.
They have been designed to work in weightless environments as well as the void of outer space that Isaacman and Gillis will encounter when they exit the ship.
Additionally, said Anderson, the suits “are custom fitted to each astronaut and they’re more flexible [than previous suits].”
Pointed out Messier, “SpaceX added a heads-up display in the helmet. The astronauts will be able to see read-outs” — of vital statistics and temperature. “Plus, there will be a camera.”
Though some view all of this as proof that billionaires can buy anything — “Look at my hashtag #cashstronauts,” Anderson said when asked for his opinion about space tourism — this five-day-long jaunt is not exactly a danger-free flex of the sort that Michael Strahan and William Shatner oohed and ahhed over when Jeff Bezos took them up via Blue Origin’s New Shepard in 2021 for a 10-minute ride toward weightlessness.
Isaacman and company could encounter rains of rocks in outer space and human debris that, according to the New York Times, may puncture the spacecraft. And then there is all that radiation.
Though neither will discuss specifics on the financial chop, Isaacman and Musk, both deep pocketed billionaires who believe in the value of space exploration, are said to be going Dutch on Polaris Dawn’s out of this world tab.
Luckily, the Washington Township, NJ, resident is rich, having earned his formidable fortune through his payroll processing company Shift 4.
On his 2021 space trip, Isaacman set a record by being the first space tourist to circle the Earth without having a professional astronaut aboard. While out there, he found time to place a pair of NFL wagers as he soared over Las Vegas.
In April 2009, the adventurous space enthusiast set a record by circumnavigating the earth in a light jet. He did it in just under 62 hours, which beat the previously held record by almost a day.
For kicks, he zips around on his Russian-made MIG-29 jet, one of a handful that are privately owned in the United States.
Beyond all of that, with the government moving slowly in terms of space exploration, and despite his #cashstronauts hashtag, Anderson is glad that some rich guys are using resources to get rockets and people — amateur billionaires or not — off the ground.
Looking at visionaries like Musk, plus willing collaborators such as Isaacman, he said, “The important thing is that Elon is making things happen. And he’s making them happen right at a pace that, you know, leaves NASA going, ‘wow!’”
