Billionaire buys SpaceX flight for himself and 3 others
A U.S. billionaire who made a fortune in tech and fighter jets is buying an entire SpaceX flight and plans to take three people with him to circle the planet this year.
Besides fulfilling his dream of flying in space, Jared Isaacman announced Monday that he aims to use the private trip to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, half coming from his own pocket.
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St. Jude already has been selected for the mission. Anyone donating to St. Jude in February will be entered into a random drawing for seat No. 3. The fourth seat will go to a business owner who uses Shift4 Payments, Isaacman’s credit card processing company in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
“I truly want us to live in a world 50 or 100 years from now where people are jumping in their rockets like the Jetsons and there are families bouncing around on the moon with their kid in a spacesuit,” Isaacman, who turns 38 next week, told The Associated Press.
“I also think if we are going to live in that world, we better conquer childhood cancer along the way.”
He has bought a Super Bowl ad to publicize the mission, dubbed Inspiration4 and targeted for October. Details of the ride in a SpaceX Dragon capsule are still being worked out, including the number of days that the four will be in orbit after blasting off from Florida. The other passengers will be announced next month.
Isaacman’s trip is the latest private space-travel announcement. Three businessmen are paying $55 million apiece to fly to the International Space Station next January aboard a SpaceX Dragon. And a Japanese businessman has a deal with SpaceX to fly to the moon in a few years.
Isaacman would not divulge how much he’s paying SpaceX, except to say that the anticipated donation to St. Jude “vastly exceeds the cost of the mission.”
While a former NASA astronaut will accompany the three businessmen, Isaacman will serve as his own spacecraft commander. The appeal, he said, is learning all about about SpaceX’s Dragon and Falcon 9 rocket. While the capsules are designed to fly autonomously, a pilot can override the system in an emergency.
A “space geek” since kindergarten, Isaacman dropped out of high school when he was 16, got a GED certificate and started, in his parents’ basement, a business that became the genesis for Shift4. He set a speed record flying around the world in 2009 while raising money for the Make-A-Wish program, and later established Draken International, the world’s largest private fleet of fighter jets.
Isaacman’s $100 million commitment to St. Jude in Memphis, Tennessee, is the largest ever by a single individual and one of the largest overall.
“We’re pinching ourselves every single day,” said Rick Shadyac, president of St. Jude’s fundraising organization.
Besides SpaceX training, Isaacman intends to take his crew on a mountain expedition to mimic his most uncomfortable experience so far — tenting on the side of a mountain in bitter winter conditions.
“We’re all going to get to know each other … really well before launch,” he said.