SpaceX sells three more flights to billionaire Jared Isaacman

Jared Isaacman – the billionaire CEO of payment processing company Shift 4 – is buying three more flights with SpaceX, the first of which is scheduled for this year and could put Isaacman and SpaceX on track to travel deeper into space than any other. human traveled in half a century.

The first flight in the series of missions, which are being called “Polaris” in honor of the North Star, is planned for later this year lasting up to five days and will include a crew of Isaacman and three others.

The crew will undertake a spacewalk, a first for anyone traveling aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Isaacman made the announcement on NBC’s Today Show early Monday morning and in an interview with the Washington Post.

Isaacman, who gained international attention when he purchased SpaceX’s first sightseeing flight dubbed “Inspiration 4”, said the first Dragon mission will be followed by a second Dragon mission soon.

These two missions will pave the way for the first manned mission on SpaceX’s upcoming Starship rocket, the one Elon Musk hopes will one day take people to Mars.

Isaacman didn’t share many details about those plans, except that during this series of missions, he plans to travel to “deep space” – which is typically defined as areas of outer space that lie on or beyond the moon.

“We’re going farther into space than humans have been since the last time we walked on the moon,” he told the Today show.

It’s unclear whether this will all go according to plan, nor has SpaceX said whether it will need to complete additional testing before Isaacman can make his journey into deep space. SpaceX also did not address what upgrades the Crew Dragon will need to safely complete the mission.

So far, the spacecraft has carried astronauts only on trips to low Earth orbit, or the area of ​​space that directly surrounds Earth. The Inspiration 4 mission marked the highest Crew Dragon has flown so far, at an altitude of approximately 360 miles, and Monday’s announcement indicated that the Polaris missions will travel beyond that.

It is unclear how much these quests will cost Isaacman. He also didn’t reveal how much he paid for the Inspiration 4 mission last year, though he did say he paid less than $200 million.

The entire Inspiration 4 mission was billed as a St. Jude Children’s Hospital fundraiser and raised a total of $243 million for the organization.

Isaacman donated about $100 million, Musk put in another $50 million, and the rest was raised through public donations. Polaris missions must also support the same cause.

On the first Polaris mission, Isaacman will be joined by veteran Air Force fighter pilot Scott Poteet and two SpaceX operations engineers – Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who will serve as the onboard medical officer. Isaacman will be the only crew member with previous spaceflight experience.

In addition to his spaceflight ambitions, Isaacman also pilots jets for recreational purposes. More recently, he was seen piloting an Alpha Jet, often used for pilot training, over SpaceX’s South Texas facility.

Poteet is a former vice president of Shift 4. The two are also frequent flight partners. Gillis and Menon may be the first SpaceX employees to travel to space.

Details about the spacewalk that the Polaris crew plans to perform on the first flight are unknown, but a press release states that they will wear “SpaceX-designed extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits, upgraded from the current intravehicular activity (IVA) suit.” .

The IVA suit refers to the pressurized black and white spacesuits that NASA astronauts and the crew of Inspiration 4 wore aboard Dragon during launch and re-entry.

But exiting the spacecraft while it is in orbit will require a much heavier protection system.

NASA described its EVA suit as “a miniature spacecraft in the shape of a human body that protects the astronaut from the dangers of being outside of a vehicle while in space or on the moon”, offering protection from “radiation, dust, debris and extreme temperatures”.

Also on the first Polaris mission, the crew will test the use of Starlink for communications in space.

So far, Starlink has only been used to broadcast internet connectivity to customers on the ground, but Polaris’ press release suggests the system could be used to support communications during orbital flights.

starship

Isaacman’s Starship flight schedule isn’t exactly clear. During a presentation about the spacecraft in Texas last week, Musk said that while he is hopeful the vehicle – which has so far only performed brief suborbital “jump tests” – will make its first orbital flight test this year, without crew.

That, however, could depend on federal regulators approving SpaceX to launch Starship in South Texas, where the company has already installed an orbital launch pad and the vast majority of Starship’s assets are located.

This could mean that Isaacman is surpassing the first billionaire who bought a Starship mission – Japanese fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa.

Maezawa paid SpaceX an undisclosed amount of money to secure a seat for him and a group of artists on a stellar trip around the moon, hoping it would take off in 2023. The billionaire is still in the process of deciding who he will take with him. .

Musk also said during the presentation that he expects Starship to cost less than $10 million per flight within a few years, which, if achieved, would be much cheaper than any other rocket on the market.

The spacecraft is expected to be far more powerful than any rocket humanity has ever built. Musk said it would have twice the thrust of the Saturn V rockets that powered moon landings in the last century.