After the explosion of a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster shocked the nation on Wednesday morning, many wonder who could be crazy enough to want to venture into space — and if it's even safe to do so.
The Falcon 9 booster 1062 exploded during its 23rd flight and fell over as it landed on drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas. It carried 21 Starlink satellites into orbit and is the same type of craft that will carry a team of astronauts into space for the Polaris Dawn mission , which will be the first commercial, private citizen spacewalk in history.
The mission was commissioned and funded by tech entrepreneur and billionaire Jared Isaacman, who has been working with SpaceX owner Elon Musk .
Isaacman, 41, earned his fortune through Shift4 Payments, a payment processing company he founded, according to the Times of India . He founded the company when he was 16 years old in his parents' New Jersey basement. The company processes over $260 billion annually and services companies like Hilton and KFC, Forbes reported.
The company earned him a massive fortune, garnering him the title of business prodigy. But it was in aviation that he made a name for himself. He recorded the fastest flight around the world in a light jet , completing the trip in 61 hours, 51 minutes and 15 seconds.
The billionaire, who is a close friend of Musk, founded Draken International, which contains some of the largest fleets of private military jets and also trains Air Force pilots. It's no wonder, then, with Isaacman's proclivities, that he would be interested in going to space as a civilian — something he's now slated to do.
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The 41-year-old, who is valued at $1.9 billion, funded the mission, the cost of which is unclear. The entire Polaris Dawn program, which he's heavily involved in, is slated to have two more commercial human space flights after the initial one scheduled for this week, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Isaacman has been to space before, too. He is an experienced pilot and funded Inspiration4. He was also commander of the first all-civilian space mission launched in September 2021. It brought passengers inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, the same type of vessel that will eventually carry the stranded American astronauts back from the International Space Station.
The first of the Polaris Dawn trips, which was reportedly postponed until Friday due to inclement weather, is slated to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida . It's slated to travel a maximum distance of 870 miles from Earth, the Times of India reported — about twice the distance from the planet as the ISS.
The flight is slated to last five days, and it will feature the first-ever private spacewalk, which is designed to have two of the crew members, including Isaacman, test SpaceX's new spacesuits as the company works to ensure they're safe for future flights and the potential exploration of the Moon and Mars by humans.
Others joining Isaacman on the flight include pilot Scott "Kidd" Poteet, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who has over 400 hours of compact flight time and was previously an executive for Shift4. Anna Menon will be the medical officer, and she currently serves as an operations engineer at SpaceX and has worked on the Dragon program. Sarah Gillis will be the mission specialist, and she's also an operations specialist at SpaceX overseeing the company's astronaut training program, per the Los Angeles Times.
The crew has reportedly been training for the mission for over two years, skydiving with the Air Force, experiencing zero-gravity flights and hiking to the summit of Cotopaxi, a 20,000 peak in Ecuador.
Wednesday morning's explosion was the first Falcon 9 failure since 2021, it was reported, and it comes amid a series of delays for the Polaris Dawn mission that have lots of people worried.
One of the failures was a helium leak, which SpaceX detailed in a statement on Tuesday, which was the new launch day after the first delay. SpaceX said in a statement: "Teams are taking a closer look at a ground-side helium leak on the Quick Disconnect umbilical. Falcon and Dragon remain healthy and the crew continues to be ready for their multi-day mission to low-Earth orbit. Next launch opportunity is no earlier than Wednesday, 28 August."
Of the bad weather that eventually plagued that launch date and pushed the mission back to Friday, the company wrote, "Due to unfavorable weather forecasted in Dragon's splashdown areas off the coast of Florida, we are now standing down from tonight and tomorrow's Falcon 9 launch opportunities of Polaris Dawn. Teams will continue to monitor weather for favorable launch and return conditions."
Isaacman himself commented on the weather delays, penning a message on X: "Our launch criteria are heavily constrained by forecasted splashdown weather conditions. With no ISS (space station) rendezvous and limited life support consumables, we must be absolutely sure of reentry weather before launching."
The message continued, "As of now, conditions are not favorable tonight or tomorrow, so we'll assess day by day. As Elon (Musk) mentioned, Polaris Dawn is a challenging mission with critical objectives, so we'll wait for the best opportunity to ensure success."
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