JARED IN THE NEWS:
April 8, 2025 – Confirmation hearing Wednesday, April 9, 2025 at 10:00 am to confirm President Donald J. Trump’s nomination of New Jersey’s Jared Isaacman to head NASA with a vote to happen later next week.
As with all Mr. Local History retrospectives, we often update the post when we learn additonal information or are sent photos from our readers. We will continue to grow this piece as information becomes available. If you have a comment, feel free to post at the bottom of this page.
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Isaacman, a former Basking Ridge high school student who made the decision to not graduate and leave Ridge High School because school just wasn’t for him. Fast forward to a man who bankrolled the Polaris Dawn mission, launching him and three others into space aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship. Time magazine estimated that Mr Isaacman paid $200m (£153m) to fellow billionaire Elon Musk for all four seats aboard the SpaceX craft.
“It’s a dream come true.”
Jared Isaacman
Jared’s call sign is “EV 1” for the Polaris Dawn SpaceX mission.
September 12, 2024—Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman conducted the first private spacewalk with SpaceX, marking a significant milestone in space exploration. The mission, part of the Polaris Dawn program, tested new spacesuits and involved extensive training. Isaacman and his crew launched from Florida and orbited 460 miles above Earth, demonstrating the potential for future private space missions.
Jared Isaacman’s Early Years
Jared Isaacman was born at Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey, on February 11, 1983, to Donald J. and Sandra Marie Isaacman. He is the youngest of four children, and his siblings include older brothers Marc (+8) and Michael (+9) and sister Tiffany (+13).
The Isaacmans lived in Westfield, New Jersey, when Jared was born. The family moved to 1011 Wychwood Rd. Westfield, NJ, in September 1982, shortly after Donald and Sandra’s marriage in February 1982. Jared was born February 11, 1983.
The Space Dream
Jared attended Wilson Elementary School in Westfield, New Jersey, from kindergarten through sixth grade. Isaacman recalls enjoying picture books of the Space Shuttle as a student at Wilson Elementry School in Westfield, New Jersey, telling his kindergarten teacher he would go into space someday. “He walked these hallways,” Wilson’s fifth-grade teacher, Coral Venturino, told her students as they prepared in November 2021 to write letters to Isaacman. “He lived in an ordinary town but went on to do extraordinary things.
Jared wasn’t what you call a “traditional high school dropout.” Jared chose to leave school. Jared says he has always dreamed about going into space and feels fortunate to be at the helm of the SpaceX Inspiration4 private mission. A Jersey boy, Isaacman was not the first kid from Jersey to catch the space bug, a state home to astronauts ranging from moonwalker Buzz Aldrin to the twin space station astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly. He recalls being in kindergarten at Wilson Elementary School, looking at high-resolution picture books of the space shuttle.
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“I remember being in the school library at Wilson Elementary School in Westfield, New Jersey, looking at books of the space shuttle. I remember telling my kindergarten teacher that someday I’m going to space and she told me she’d be watching from her rocking chair.” Jared Isaacman
“Who hasn’t imagined themselves cruising around in Star Wars X-wing?” Isaacman said, referring to a famous “Star Wars” ship piloted by hero Luke Skywalker, among others. “I do believe that that’s a world that we’re all going to live in at some point, but it might be a little bit down the road.” Jared Isaacman
Side Story
On March 16, 2022, Jared returned to his fifth-grade class in Westfield, New Jersey, this time as a special guest. Coral Venturino, a fifth-grade teacher at Isaacman’s elementary school in Westfield, hopes Isaacman will take the Wilson School key with him on his next mission into space.
Next Chapter: Bernards Township
In October 1995, the Isaacmans moved from Westfield to Liberty Corner, New Jersey, a western hamlet of Bernards Township. Jared would attend Liberty Corner’s William Annin Middle School.
Source: RHS Yearbook 1998.
As a ninth grader and a 14-year-old freshman at Ridge High School, Isaacman discovered that he and his best friend, Brendan Lauber, had a knack for fixing computers. They started a computer repair business in his parents’ basement called Deco Systems, offering services to hapless computer users. He also worked at CompUSA, just off the Somerville Circle in Raritan/Bridgewater, NJ.
Jared never graduated from Ridge High School. He took and passed the GED, as he had promised his parents that he would drop out as part of the deal. “I was a horrible student,” Mr Isaacman said in the series. “And I wasn’t happy in school, either.” In 1999, Jared pulled the trigger and left school to work as an in-house IT employee for CEO Mario Parisi at Merchant Services International (MSI).
At MSI, this is where Jared secured a precious bank identification number that launched his future endeavors. Everything was in place to blaze a trail in the payments industry as he created United Bank Card, Inc., which eventually was renamed Harbortouch. While all this was happening, Jared’s father, Donald, was about a year away from losing his home after being laid off from his sales position at an alarm security firm. He would become one of Jared’s first employees in sales.
Jared’s Famous Basement
Later that year, in 1999, Jared founded a retail payment processing company, Shift4 Payments, from his parents’ basement. Shfit4 Payments is like PayPal in that it provides a secure payment processing portal. According to Forbes, the company handles over $200 billion in payments yearly for a third of the country’s restaurants and hotels, including the Hilton and Four Seasons, and fast-food chains like KFC and Arby’s. It all started with $10,000 in seed funding from Seymore Isaacman, his grandfather.
Five years after starting Shift4 Payments, Jared began taking flying lessons in 2004, which would take his life in a new direction. But that didn’t halt his banking endeavors. One year later, Isaacman founded a retail payment processing company, United Bank Card, later renamed Harbortouch, a point-of-sale payment company based in Pennsylvania.
In 2008, Jared tried to set the world record for circumnavigating the globe in a light jet, but he fell just short. He traveled around the world in 83 hours, just beyond the existing record of 82 hours. One year later, Jared tried again, setting a new world record for circumnavigating the globe in a light jet, flying 61:51:15, about 20 hours faster than the previous record of 82 hours.
Jared decided to return to school, attending Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. He earned a bachelor’s degree in professional aeronautics in 2011, preparing him for a year later, when in 2012, he co-founded Draken International. This Florida-based company trains pilots for the United States Armed Forces. The company owns around 70 fighter jets and is considered the largest private air force.
Jared’s personal life would also change. Remember Monica Chacana, his William Annin Middle School friend in Bernards Township? In 2012, Monica and Jared were married. If our math is correct, Monica was twenty-nine, and Jared was twenty-eight. And remember that house where Jared started his first company in his parents’ basement? Douglas and Sandy Isaacman sold their home in May 2016.
The First Billion Is Always the Toughest
Forbes reported that in 2019, Mr Isaacman sold a majority stake in Draken International to Blackstone, a Wall Street firm, for a nine-figure sum, launching himself into billionaire status. Two years later, in February 2021, Jared announced he was Inspiration4’s first private human spaceflight commander. Seven months later, on September 18, 2021, when the capsule landed, it was the first trip by any private citizen to outer space.
The spacecraft orbited the Earth, and it took two to four days before the civilian crew returned to solid ground. In that time, the crew onboard enjoyed the Earth’s view from a few hundred miles above the surface and, hopefully, enjoyed more scintillating conversation than you might be stuck with on a typical long-haul flight. Isaacman used the space flight to raise over $240 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital—half of which he donated himself!
Inspiration 4 Mission – The Theme is Inspire
The St. Jude’s Hospital for children has always had a place in Jared’s heart. In fact, St. Jude’s was the primary benefactor for Jared Isaacman’s civilian space flight. He noted that the connection to St. Jude was a defining theme of his flight. “I’ve been fortunate in life; you don’t get to a position that I’m fortunate enough to be in without the ball bouncing your way a couple of times,” he said. “These families [at St. Jude] were dealt horrible hands. They’re going through what no one should ever have to go through. It’s immense heartache, and the sad part is that many of those kids will not grow up to have any of the experiences I’ve been lucky enough to have. We’ve just got to do something about that.”
Jared Isaacman announced that he had bought an entire SpaceX commercial flight called Inspiration 4. In it, he and three other specially selected civilians will orbit the earth and raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The launch is set for September 15, 2021, from NASA’s Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Inspiration 4 launched on Wednesday, September 15, 2021, at 8:02 p.m. EDT and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean Saturday evening, September 18, 2021, off the coast of Florida, at 7:06 p.m. EDT.
Isaacman chose four mission pillars — leadership, hope, prosperity, and generosity — “to assemble a very inspiring crew, who all have so many amazing qualities and contribute so many interesting firsts of this mission. I want there to be kindergartners who grow up like me and want to become astronauts, except that I’d like them to have a really good chance of [that] being able to happen.
Jared Isaacman about the mission.
Splashdown – Sept. 18, 2021, 7:06 pm EDT
The crew spent three days in orbit and viewed 15 sunrises/sunsets before returning to Earth on Saturday evening, September 18, 2021. Haley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor, and Chris Sembroski join Jared. Netflix hosted a special “Countdown to Launch” event with astronauts and celebrities. You can see a replay of that webcast on Netflix’s YouTube page.
Shortened Live Feed of the Inspiration 4 splashdown at 7:06, Saturday, September 18, 2021. Welcome home, team!
2024’s Return to Space – Polaris Dawn & The Dragon Crew
Isaacman’s space travels wouldn’t end. On September 12, 2024, Jared Isaacman became the first non-professional astronaut to walk in space. The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying the crew reached its peak altitude of 1,400.7 kilometers (870 miles) at 9:19 p.m. ET on Tuesday Thursday morning, during the third day of a five-day trip to Earth orbit, the Polaris Dawn team—which includes Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, the mission’s financer; his close friend and former US Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet; and SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis—conducted the first commercial spacewalk.
FEWER THAN 600 PEOPLE HAVE EVER BEEN TO SPACE IN THE WORLD’S HISTORY
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On September 12, 2024, Jared Isaacman conducted the first private spacewalk with SpaceX, marking a significant milestone in space exploration. The mission, part of the Polaris Dawn program, tested new spacesuits and involved extensive training. Isaacman and his crew launched from Florida and orbited 460 miles above Earth, demonstrating the potential for future private space missions.
On a side note, Isaacman bankrolled the Polaris Dawn mission, launching him and three others into space aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship. Time magazine estimated that Mr Isaacman paid $200m (£153m) to fellow billionaire Elon Musk for all four seats aboard the SpaceX craft.
SpaceX recorded that after reaching the record-high altitude, the mission’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft lowered to 458 miles (737 km) at its highest point. Once there, Resilience was depressurized, and Isaacman and Sarah Gillis exited into the void one at a time, with Isaacman popping out at about 6:48 a.m. EDT (1048 GMT) and Gillis following at 7:04 a.m. EDT (1104 GMT). Polaris Dawn returned to Earth on Sept. 15, 2024. The vehicle’s crew had only about five or six days of life support, which means the return could occur in the early hours of Sunday or Monday morning.
Splashdown – Mission Accomplished (Again)
SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn crew is home, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico to cap off a five-day mission to orbit, including the world’s first commercial spacewalk. The Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts landed off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, at 3:37 a.m. ET Sunday.
Polaris Dawn returned to Earth on Sept. 15, 2024. The vehicle’s crew had only about five or six days of life support, which means the return could occur in the early hours of Sunday or Monday morning.
Next Voyage – Isaacman Tagged to Lead NASA
As if Jared’s life weren’t exciting enough, on December 4, 2024, Isaacman announced via a tweet that President-Elect Donald J. Trump had nominated him to lead NASA. Fast-forward to April 8, 2025. Congressional hearings began to approve Jared Isaacmand as the head of NASA.
Historic Images
Special Video Collection
September 30, 2021. According to Netflix, “The final episode, which premieres just days after the mission is completed, will feature unprecedented access inside the spacecraft, capturing the launch and the crew.” You can watch a video sequentially by clicking PLAY or selecting it from the Playlist button at the video window’s top right.
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Great story. Very inspirational for sure.
Good journey and may the force be with you
Wow.