Jared Isaacman On How His SpaceX Polaris Missions Will Differ From Inspiration4

In the first part of this exclusive interview series with Jared Isaacman, we covered a lot of ground, including the billionaire’s former days as an air show pilot, what he thinks of the Jeff Bezos/Sir Richard Branson suborbital space tourism effort and how he handles fear. In this second part, Isaacman touches on his philanthropic philosophies, his own space efforts, both past – Inspiration4 last fall – and future, Polaris – and whether he wants to go to the moon someday. Following are edited excerpts from a longer Zoom conversation.

Jim Clash: You’ve seen Earth from space. They say the view is life-changing.

Jared Isaacman: You can see a lot of high-resolution video and pictures here on Earth, and generally they’re going to look as you might expect. The difference is that up there Earth radiates energy, colors, brightness. It’s magnificent, the typical overview effect. But you don’t need a spaceflight to know that the world shouldn’t have conflicts over border issues 100 years old, or that we shouldn’t destroy our atmosphere.

Clash: With Inspiration4, why did you choose to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital over other charities?

Isaacman: I’ve been pretty active in philanthropy since I started my company 20-some years ago, and have always gravitated toward children in difficult circumstances. I remember when I was five years old on vacation in Mexico, I saw a family with an infant living out of a tire. That made a lasting impression. Look, there’s luck in life. You can always be born in better circumstances, set up for greater success. In my early adventures flying around the world and in air shows, I gravitated toward [giving money] to Make-A-Wish Foundation because, if you’re dealt such an awful hand, the least we can do as a society is to make it a little better. Inspiration4 wasn’t a platform to raise millions of dollars, but hundreds of millions. My mindset was that if St. Jude’s is successful, you don’t need to grant as many wishes.

Clash: How will your three upcoming Polaris missions with SpaceX differ from Inspiration4?

Isaacman: The next three are all test-and-development. Inspiration4 was just to show it could be done, the first time you had everyday people go to space. Dr. [Sian] Proctor and Hayley Arceneaux weren’t training for years. They found out they were flying a month before being fitted for a spacesuit. The idea that you bring people together for a great cause sent an inspiring message to the world. Sure, we went past the [International] Space Station. But my thought was if we got that mission right, imagine all of the exciting ones to follow.

For the first of the Polaris missions, Dawn, we’re going to fly the highest since Apollo, 870 miles, right at the edge of the Van Allen Radiation Belt. You’re setting an altitude record, but that’s not why you do it. It’s to help design future vehicles so you can, say, fly to Mars without killing everybody on board, frying your avionics, from radiation. Yes, it will have the first commercial spacewalk, but you’re doing that more to test the first new spacesuit designed in 50 years. The current spacesuits NASA uses cost $1.5 billion [in today’s dollars] for 10. That’s not economical. We’ll develop a much cheaper mass-produced suit where, like in the movies, you just throw on a helmet and go outside. What is the protocol for that? Do you need a 24-hour pre-breathing program, maybe try something different than what NASA has thought of? Finally, all human spaceflight communications for the last 50 years has been over ground stations and via old satellites. If you can communicate over lasers with Starlink, you can send video messages home to your family from Mars, where you have 20-minute transmission delays. You’d like to send something meaningful with that kind of delay, right?

So Dawn is about testing new things, the second mission will build off of that, and the third will be the first flight of SpaceX’s Starship, a whole new booster and vehicle to ultimately take humans back to the moon – NASA already has a contract for that – and to Mars.

Clash: Do you want to go to the moon someday yourself?

Isaacman: I want to make a difference. I’m motivated by challenges. I don’t want to do easy things, but things that are hard. As for going to the moon, I don’t know if that checks all the boxes. Maybe Mars will someday, we’ll see.

Clash: What is your inspiration in life, what drives you?

Isaacman: I have two philosophies. One, you’re not fulfilling your purpose unless you maximize every opportunity available to you. And two, you have an obligation to leave the world a better place than you found it. For me, those philosophies converged perfectly with Inspiration4. There, we assembled a crew with the objective of being different. It didn’t make sense to put together a group of four fighter pilots. We know they can go to space. It was about inspiring others who may dream of going but don’t think they can. Hayley flew with a prosthesis. There are a lot of people who thought they had no chance because, “I’m not perfect,” but now, since Hayley flew, think that they can go, too.