Billionaire Jared Isaacman is preparing for his first ever private spacewalk. It should be exciting, but he has anxious thoughts about the upcoming mission. In an interview with CNBC, Isaacman, who is going into space for the second time, said that when he would go into space on the Polaris Dawn mission aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon, he realized he would be “surrounded by death.”
The Polaris Dawn crew, which consists of Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, SpaceX space operations engineers, have been preparing for years for this challenge. According to the billionaire, training in a vacuum chamber is the closest experience to real space, where pressure and temperature changes and psychological stress become part of the challenge. Isaacman admits that these sensations are extremely difficult to perceive.
Another famous space tourist, William Shatner, recalled his 2021 flight to low Earth orbit with Blue Origin in his memoir, “Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder.” Shatner tells us that instead of the expected inspiration, he felt horror staring into a limitless space, where instead of majesty he saw only death.
While Isaacman is unlikely to share the same gloomy perspective, his words partially reflect Shatner’s thoughts. Isaacman, who is also a fighter pilot, recognizes the harshness of space but, unlike Shatner, doesn’t use his experience to reflect on environmental protection. Instead, his approach to training and future flight is more practical and focused on survival in extreme conditions.
This mission will be the first of three planned for Polaris, which is scheduled to launch on August 26.
Earlier we reported on how a photo of Polaris Dawn astronauts puzzled the internet community.
