Jared Isaacman | |
---|---|
Born | [1] | February 11, 1983
Title | Founder, CEO, of Shift4 and Founder of Draken International |
Spouse | Monica Isaacman [2] |
Children | 2 |
Space career | |
Commercial astronaut Crew Dragon commander | |
Time in space | 2d 23h 3m |
Missions | |
Mission insignia |
Jared Isaacman (born February 11, 1983) is an American entrepreneur, pilot, philanthropist, and commercial astronaut. [3] [4] He is the founder of Draken International, a private air force provider and the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, a payment processor. [5] As of February 2023, his estimated net worth is US$2 billion. [6]
Isaacman was the commander of Inspiration4, a private spaceflight using SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience, launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on September 16, 2021. The crew returned to Earth on September 18, 2021, after orbiting at 585 km (364 mi) in altitude. The mission was part of a fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, to which Isaacman pledged to donate $100 million. [7]
Isaacman will command the Polaris Dawn mission, the first private spaceflight in a series of missions named the Polaris Program. Isaacman is currently undergoing commercial astronaut training at SpaceX. [8]
Jared Isaacman was born on February 11, 1983, to Donald and Sandra Marie Isaacman. He is Jewish, although he has said he is not a religious person despite donating to synagogues. [9] [10] He is a youngest child, and has three siblings: two brothers, Marc and Michael, and a sister, Tiffany. [11]
In 1999, Isaacman founded a retail payment processing company named United Bank Card, which was later renamed Harbortouch, a point-of-sale payment company based in Pennsylvania. He was the founding CEO, and retained that role in 2015 with the company having "been profitable for over a decade [while processing] US$11 billion a year from 60,000 merchants, generating US$300 million in revenues." [12] By 2020, the company had been renamed Shift4 Payments, Isaacman remained CEO, and the company was processing US$200 billion in payments annually. [5]
In 2012, he co-founded Draken International, a Florida-based company that trains pilots for the United States Armed Forces. The company operates one of the world's largest fleets of privately owned fighter jets. [12] [13]
While in his 20s, Isaacman performed in airshows with the Black Diamond Jet Team. [13] [14]
In 2008, he made a first attempt to set a new world record for circumnavigating the globe in a light jet, falling short by traveling around the world in 83 hours, just beyond the existing record of 82 hours. The record attempt was a fundraising event for Make-A-Wish Foundation. [15]
In April 2009, on his second attempt, he set a world record for circumnavigating the globe in a light jet, making the flight in 61:51:15, about 20 hours faster than the previous record of 82 hours. The world record attempt was made as a fundraising event for Make-A-Wish Foundation of New Jersey. [12] [16] He flew a Cessna Citation CJ2 with two other crew members, skipping stops in India and Japan, where he encountered hours-long ground delays in his previous attempt in 2008. [15]
In February 2021, Isaacman announced that he would serve as commander of Inspiration4, the first private human spaceflight in which none of the people aboard are from a government agency. [17] The mission, operated by SpaceX, on board an autonomous Crew Dragon spacecraft launched by a Falcon 9 launch vehicle. [17] [18]
Isaacman received the call sign "Rook" during flight training. [19] He is featured on the cover of a Time magazine double issue with the rest of the crew of Inspiration4 in August 2021. [20] Inspiration4 launched on September 15, 2021 (UTC), achieved orbit and splashed down 3 days later.
During the Inspiration4 mission, Isaacman made history by making the first-known sports bet from space, placing two bets on NFL football with the BetMGM Sportsbook, while over Las Vegas. [21]
Isaacman will command the planned Polaris Dawn mission. [22] and perform an EVA with Sarah Gillis.
In 2004, Isaacman began taking flying lessons. In 2009, he set a world record for circumnavigating the globe. [12] [16] He received a bachelor's degree in professional aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2011. He is flight qualified in multiple military jet aircraft. [5] In his 20s, he flew in many airshows, but by his 30s, he had stopped flying as such. [13] He continues to fly one of the few privately owned MiG-29s in the U.S. [23]
He is married and has two daughters. [24] Isaacman has been a resident of Washington Township, New Jersey. [15]
Human spaceflight is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft, often with the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew. Spacecraft can also be remotely operated from ground stations on Earth, or autonomously, without any direct human involvement. People trained for spaceflight are called astronauts, cosmonauts (Russian), or taikonauts (Chinese); and non-professionals are referred to as spaceflight participants or spacefarers.
Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. Tourists are motivated by the possibility of viewing Earth from space, feeling weightlessness, experiencing extremely high speed and something unusual, and contributing to science.
Space Adventures, Inc. is an American space tourism company founded in 1998 by Eric C. Anderson. Its offerings include zero-gravity atmospheric flights, orbital spaceflights, and other spaceflight-related experiences including cosmonaut training, spacewalk training, and launch tours. Plans announced thus far include sub-orbital and lunar spaceflights, though these are not being actively pursued at present. Nine of its clients have participated in the orbital spaceflight program with Space Adventures, including one who took two separate trips to space.
Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed, manufactured, and operated by American space company SpaceX, primarily for flights to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX also launches private missions, such as Inspiration4 and Axiom Space Missions. There are two variants of the Dragon spacecraft: Crew Dragon, a spacecraft capable of ferrying four crewmembers, and Cargo Dragon, a replacement for the original Dragon 1 used to carry freight to and from space. The spacecraft consists of a reusable space capsule and an expendable trunk module. The spacecraft launches atop a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket and the capsule returns to Earth through splashdown. It has proven to be the most cost effective spacecraft in history to be used by NASA.
The following is a timeline of important events in the history of private spaceflight, including important technical as well as legislative and political advances. Though the industry has its origins in the early 1960s, soon after the beginning of the Space Age, private companies did not begin conducting launches into space until the 1980s, and it was not until the 21st century that multiple companies began privately developing and operating launch vehicles and spacecraft in earnest.
Sian Hayley "Leo" Proctor is an American commercial astronaut, geology professor, artist, author, and science communicator. She became the first female commercial spaceship pilot on the all-civilian Inspiration4 orbital spaceflight, 15 September 2021. As pilot of the Inspiration4's SpaceX Crew Dragon space capsule, Proctor became the first African-American woman to pilot a spacecraft. She was also the education outreach officer for the first Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) Mission.
The year 2021 broke the record for the most orbital launch attempts till then (146) and most humans in space concurrently (19) despite the effects of COVID-19 pandemic.
Axiom Mission 1 was a privately funded and operated crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission was operated by Axiom Space out of Axiom's Mission Control Center MCC-A in Houston, Texas. The flight launched on 8 April 2022 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft used was a SpaceX Crew Dragon. The crew consisted of Michael López-Alegría, an American born in Spain and a professionally trained astronaut hired by Axiom, Eytan Stibbe from Israel, Larry Connor from the United States, and Mark Pathy from Canada.
Crew Dragon Resilience is a Crew Dragon spacecraft manufactured by SpaceX and built under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. In November 2020, it was launched into orbit to the International Space Station as part of the Crew-1 mission. With crew prompting, Resilience docked autonomously to the station at 04:01 UTC on 17 November 2020, or Day 2 of the mission, marking the first operational docking of a Crew Dragon and the first operational docking of the Commercial Crew Program. The mission carried four additional members of Expedition 64 to the three already on station.
Inspiration4 was a 2021 human spaceflight operated by SpaceX on behalf of Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman. The mission launched the Crew Dragon Resilience on 16 September 2021 at 00:02:56 UTC from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A atop a Falcon 9 launch vehicle. It placed the Dragon capsule into low Earth orbit with mission termination on 18 September 2021 at 23:06:49 UTC when Resilience splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean.
Hayley Arceneaux is a St. Jude Children's Research Hospital physician assistant and commercial astronaut. She joined billionaire Jared Isaacman on SpaceX's first private spaceflight Inspiration4, which launched on September 16, 2021, 00:02:56 UTC, and successfully water-landed local-time on Saturday, September 18. Arceneaux became the first human in space with a prosthetic leg bone after surviving bone cancer. At age 29, Arceneaux was the youngest American to travel to space, surpassed a few months later by 23 year old Cameron Bess aboard Blue Origin NS-19. Arceneaux remains the youngest American to have orbited the Earth.
Christopher Sembroski is an American data engineer, Air Force veteran, and commercial astronaut, currently living in Gig Harbor, Washington, United States. He flew to orbit on Inspiration4, a private spaceflight funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman.
An amateur astronaut is an untrained person participating in a spaceflight. The term is widely used by SpaceX and others, and by widespread media, especially after the launch of Inspiration4, crewed by 4 untrained humans, on a 3-day flight around the Earth.
Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space is a 2021 American five-part docuseries jointly produced by Netflix and Time Studios to chronicle, in near real-time, the successful SpaceX Inspiration4 orbital mission which occurred in September 2021.
Anil Menon is a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force, emergency medicine physician and NASA astronaut.
Polaris Dawn is a planned private human spaceflight mission, operated by SpaceX on behalf of Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, scheduled to launch no earlier than mid-2024. The flight will be using a Crew Dragon capsule, and is the first of three planned missions in the Polaris program.
Anna Menon is an American engineer scheduled to fly on Polaris Dawn, a private space mission. Menon worked for NASA for seven years before joining SpaceX, where she works as a lead engineer of space operations.
The Polaris Program is a planned human spaceflight program organized by businessman and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman. Isaacman, who commanded the first all-civilian spaceflight—Inspiration4—in September 2021, purchased flights from SpaceX in order to create the Polaris Program. The first two flights will use the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, while the third flight is planned to be the first crewed Starship flight. Polaris Dawn, the first flight, will attempt the first private spacewalk.
Sarah Gillis is an American engineer who is scheduled to fly on Polaris Dawn, a private space mission.
Scott "Kidd" Poteet is an American pilot retired from the United States Air Force scheduled to fly on Polaris Dawn, a private space mission.