SpaceX Launches Billionaire for First Private Spacewalk

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Facts

• SpaceX on Tuesday launched Jared Isaacman, the fintech billionaire commander and funder of the Polaris Dawn mission, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first-ever private spacewalk.^[1][2]
• Isaacman, accompanied by a retired military fighter pilot and two SpaceX engineers, was lifted off in a SpaceX Falcon 9 spacecraft. Their spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday, midway through the five-day mission.^[3]
• If successful, the four crew members will reach the highest orbit above the Earth — an altitude of 870 miles (1.4K kilometers) — traveling farther than any human since NASA's Apollo program ended in the 1970s.^[4][1]
• The spacewalk is intended to test Extravehicular Activity spacesuits that SpaceX claims would be essential for further missions to the Moon or Mars.^[5]
• The crew aboard the Dragon Resilience capsule is expected to conduct multiple experiments, including testing laser-based communication with Space X’s Starlink satellite constellation.^[6][7]
• Isaacman has paid SpaceX for three Polaris missions — including one planned for Starship, the next-generation spacecraft Elon Musk intends to use to take astronauts to Mars.^[8][3]

Sources: ^[1]BBC News, ^[2]Payments Dive, ^[3]Sky News, ^[4]Associated Press, ^[5]Los Angeles Times, ^[6]Al Jazeera, ^[7]New York Post and ^[8]Breitbart.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Legal Dive. Isaacman is on a daring, risky private space mission to lay the ground for high-altitude missions to the moon or Mars. He and his crew will pass through high radiation levels — not for fun or to display wealth, but to fulfill his dream of sending people to other worlds. Isaacman has a vision of making life multi-planetary and advancing human spaceflight to be more commonplace. This ambition may sound far-fetched to some, but it will create opportunities to do science along the way and push the limits of space travel.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by US News & World Report. This privately funded space exploration isn't making space more accessible to all, it's a vanity project for billionaires buying their way into space history as amateur astronauts. Spaceflight is difficult, expensive, and dangerous, which means only the ultra-rich can fly, land, and walk in space. The idea of billionaires paying for themselves to go into space isn't just distasteful — it's one giant leap for pollution. The money the wealthy are willing to pour into space tourism could be invested in making life better on our planet.

Predictions