Meet the Billionaire Set to Become the First Private Citizen to Space-Walk

Set to join the ultra-exclusive club of civilians having walked in space is billionaire Jared Isaacman. The 38-year-old entrepreneur, who founded the Shift4 payment company, will lead a crew of four for a fly aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in a journey dubbed Polaris Dawn. The launch, subjected to no earlier than August 26, will take place from Florida.

The crew will be commanded by Isaacman himself, a pilot with more than 7,000 hours of flying time in a fighter jet. He will be joined onboard by mission pilot Scott Poteet, mission specialist Sarah Gillis, and mission specialist/medical officer Anna Menon. It'll also be the first commercial spacewalk in which the crew will be tethered to their spacecraft as they get oxygen through a hose.

Isaacman has a net worth of $2 billion, and in 1999 he founded a company called Shift4 Payments, which he still holds roughly 38 percent of its stake. He is an advanced-rated pilot and world-record holder for speed-around-the-world flights; he serves as the mission commander of the Inspiration4 mission, which helped raise over $240 million for charity. He is a co-founder of Draken International, which is the largest and fastest private air force in the world.

Polaris Dawn will ride Crew Dragon to the highest Earth orbit flown to date, direct to the Van Allen radiation belts. It will study the effects of spaceflight and radiation on human health and test Starlink—SpaceX's laser-based communications—in space. This will also be a test of EVA spacesuits designed by SpaceX that are highly necessary for long-duration missions in the future to the Moon and Mars.