Earth ‘looks like a perfect world’, billionaire Jared Isaacman says on historic SpaceX spacewalk

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A billionaire who stepped out on the first private spacewalk declared that “ Earth sure looks like a perfect world”, as he emerged from a spacecraft and looked back at the planet.

Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, 41, carried out a number of mobility tests on a new spacesuit and was the first of two crew members to step out into space.

Mission commander Isaacman joins a small group of spacewalkers who until now had included only professional astronauts from a dozen countries.

In a live feed relayed back to Earth on Thursday, he could be heard saying: “Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do. But from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world.”

SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, erupted in cheers and applause when Mr Isaacman first exited the spacecraft.

The commercial spacewalk was the main focus of the five-day flight financed by Mr Isaacman and Elon Musk ’s company.

After completing a series of manoeuvres, Mr Isaacman returned to the Dragon spacecraft, to make way for mission specialist Sarah Gillis, 30, to perform the same series of actions and close the hatch after returning to the cabin herself.

Before the spacewalk began, the capsule was completely depressurised, with the four-person crew relying on their slim, SpaceX-developed spacesuits for oxygen, provided via an umbilical connection to Crew Dragon.

The spacewalk was scheduled to last only about 30 minutes, but the procedures to prepare for it and to finish it safely lasted an hour and 46 minutes.

It marked a risky test of the new spacesuit designs and procedures for the capsule, among other things, in a mission meant to push the boundaries of what private companies can do in Earth’s orbit.

As the two astronauts returned to their cabin seats, SpaceX ground teams at the company’s Hawthorne, California headquarters watched as the capsule’s hatch door sealed shut and carried out leak checks. The spacewalk officially ended around 8am ET (1pm BST).

Isaacman, Gillis, Scott Poteet, 50, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon, 38, had been orbiting Earth aboard Crew Dragon since Tuesday’s pre-dawn launch from Florida of the Polaris Dawn mission. Menon and Poteet remained inside the spacecraft during the spacewalk.

It is the Elon Musk-led company’s latest and riskiest bid to push the boundaries of commercial spaceflight.

Isaacman, a pilot and the billionaire founder of electronic payments company Shift4, is bankrolling the Polaris mission, as he did his Inspiration4 flight with SpaceX in 2021.

He has declined to say how much he is paying, but the missions are likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, based on Crew Dragon’s price of roughly $55 million a seat for other flights.

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