HUGE UPDATE:
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.
Polaris Dawn will return to Earth no later than Sept. 16, 2024. Polaris Dawn crew would have only about five or six days’ worth of life support on the vehicle. That would mean the return to Earth could fall in the early hours of Sunday or Monday morning. Splashdown can occur at any of seven potential locations off Florida’s East and West coasts.
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’s Polaris Dawn Astronauts Returned to Earth early Sunday, September 15, 2024
SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn crew is home, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico to cap off a five-day mission to orbit—which included 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.
Watch the landing here:
Spacewalk Watch Live – September 12, 2024
(Replay after 8:14 AM EDT)
Streaming on YouTube live right now! Started at 3:12 am EDT (Two streams available below).
“It’s a dream come true.”
Jared Isaacman
Jared’s call sign is “EV 1” for the Polaris Dawn SpaceX mission.
As with all Mr. Local History retrospectives, we often update the post when we learn stories and are sent photos from our community. 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.
Mr. Local History Project
Jared Isaacman’s Biography:
- 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 brothers Marc (+8) and Michael and sister Tiffany.
- The Isaacmans lived in Union, New Jersey, when Jared was born. The family moved to 1011 Wychwood Rd. Westfield, NJ, sometime around April 1987.
- Jared attended Wilson Elementary School in Westfield, New Jersey, from kindergarten through sixth grade.
- The Isaacmans moved from 1011 Wychwood Rd. Westfield, NJ (sold Sept 28, 1995), to 167 Douglas Rd, Liberty Corner, NJ, a section of Bernards Township, in October 1995 when Jared was 12.
- Jared attended Liberty Corner’s William Annin Middle School (6 – 8th grade when he was 12-13.)
- As a ninth grader and a freshman at Ridge High School (14), Isaacman discovered that he and his best friend, Brendan Lauber, had a knack for fixing computers. They started a computer repair business in his parent’s basement called Deco Systems, offering services to hapless computer users. He also worked at CompUSA, just off the Somerville Circle in Raritan/Bridgewater, NJ.
Source: RHS Yearbook 1998.
- 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, like, happy in school, either.”
- Jared left school and worked as an in-house IT expert for CEO Mario Parisi at Merchant Services International (MSI).
- Jared got his precious bank identification number. Everything was in place to blaze a trail in the payments industry as he created United Bank Card, Inc., which eventually was renamed Harbortouch.
- Jared’s dad, Donald, was about a year away from losing his home after he was laid off from being an alarm salesman. He became one of Jared’s first employees as a salesman. Once Jared became successful, he bought his dad a Ferrari 360 for Father’s Day!
- Attended Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in professional aeronautics in 2011.
- Jared founded a retail payment processing company, Shift4 Payments, 1999 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 seed funding from his grandfather.
- 2004, Jared began taking flying lessons
- In 2005, they founded a retail payment processing company named United Bank Card, later renamed Harbortouch, a point-of-sale payment company based in Pennsylvania.
- In 2008, he 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.
- In April 2009, he set 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.
- 2012 – Monica Chacana Isaacman, they met at William Annin Middle School and married in 2012 at 29.
- 2012 – Co-founded Draken International, a Florida-based company that trains pilots for the United States Armed Forces. The company owns around 70 fighter jets, considered the largest private air force.
- 2016 – According to public records, the family sold their home in Liberty Corner in May 2016.
- 2019 – Forbes reported that in 2019, Mr Isaacman sold a majority stake in Draken to Blackstone, a Wall Street firm, for a nine-figure sum, launching himself into billionaire status.
- In February 2021, Jared announced he was Inspiration4’s first private human spaceflight commander.
- 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 flight to space and raised over $240 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital—half of which he donated himself!
- 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.
- 2024 – 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.
- 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 will return to Earth no later than Sept. 16, 2024.
- FEWER THAN 600 PEOPLE HAVE EVER BEEN TO SPACE IN THE WORLD’S HISTORY
- Lastly, did we mention that Jared is worth an estimated $2 billion?
Original Post:
September 15, 2021 (Almost four years ago from Jared’s 2nd Space Voyage)
Yes, a billionaire Basking Ridge high school dropout went to outer space!!!!! Do we have your attention yet? The history of Jared Isaacman dropping out of Ridge High School more than 20 years ago to pursue a successful career in business is not your typical dropout story.
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.
SPLASHDOWN WATCH PARTY – Sept. 18, 2021
Actual Splashdown: 7:06 pm EDT
SpaceX’s webcast for the return of Dragon and the Inspiration4 crew will go live about 1 hour before splashdown. We’ll have it right here starting at 6 pm EDT. See the live feed below – but we ask you to Donate first!!!!!!
The crew is spending three days in orbit and will view 15 sunrises/sunsets before returning to Earth on Saturday evening, September 18, 2021. Haley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor, and Chris Sembroski join Jared. Netflix also hosted a special “Countdown to Launch” event with astronauts and celebrities. You can see a replay of that webcast on Netflix’s YouTube page.
Welcome home team!
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.
Jared Isaacman (now living in Allentown), announced on Monday, Feb. 1, 2021, that he had bought an entire Space X 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.
The Theme – Inspire!
The St. Jude’s Hospital will be the primary benefactor for Jared Isaacman’s civilian space flight. In fact, he noted that the connection to St. Jude will be a defining theme of his flight. “I’ve been very lucky in life; you really 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 many of those kids will not grow up to any of the experiences I’ve been lucky enough to have. We’ve just got to do something about that.”
The Space Dream
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 he feels fortunate to be at the helm of the Inspiration4 private mission to Earth orbit that SpaceX will launch late this year. Isaacman caught the space bug as a kid in Westfield, New Jersey, 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.
I
“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.”
A Special Video Collection
Netflix will air the final episode of the three-part series on 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.
The Inspiration 4 Team
When Isaacman got the chance to buy four seats aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for the Inspiration4 mission, he decided to be “really thoughtful” about picking the three people who would go with him. Recently, it was announced that Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, would join him. Arceneaux is a childhood survivor of bone cancer and was treated at St. Jude when she was 10 years old.
Mr. Isaacman and his passengers will be the first to orbit the planet without the presence of a professional astronaut from NASA or another space agency. There are no more empty seats on Inspiration4, but there are still plenty of ways to get involved. As they count down to this historic mission, be part of the excitement and help us meet our fundraising goal.
Two seats were made available through separate contests on the Inspiration4 website. One seat, named for “Generosity,” was awarded from a draw from people who donated to St. Jude. The second seat, “Prosperity,” was awarded by a set of entrepreneurs who showcased their business ideas on the Shift4Shop e-commerce platform; Isaacman is the CEO of Shift4Shop. Dr. Sian Proctor, who is African-American and holds a doctorate in science education, got on board by winning that contest.
Christopher Sembroski said he thought he donated $50 but did not win the sweepstakes, which helped raise $13 million for St. Jude. A friend, though, ended up winning—an old college buddy from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. The friend, who remains anonymous, decided not to go to space but, knowing about Mr. Sembroski’s enthusiasm, transferred the prize to him.
Isaacman will bring his crew into the mountains. “It will get us all super uncomfortable and [in] close quarters and hopefully in snowy conditions because I definitely want to make sure we all get along well under those circumstances here on Earth before we go off in space together,” he said.
The Flight
Isaacman said he’s proud to fly on a SpaceX Crew Dragon for this mission because he believes Elon Musk’s company “reinvigorated the world’s interest in space” following the end of the space shuttle program in 2011. The shuttle ferried hundreds of astronauts to space between 1981 and its 2011 retirement. After that, the next crewed mission to Earth orbit that launched from the United States was SpaceX’s Demo-2 mission in May 2020.
The capsule and its occupants will circle Earth at an altitude of 335 miles, about 80 miles higher than the orbit of the International Space Station. The launch date, initially planned for October, was launched September 15, 2021.
Historic Images
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Great story. Very inspirational for sure.
Good journey and may the force be with you
Wow.