HAWTHORNE — 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.
TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
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.’”
