SpaceX Launches Billionaire for First Private Spacewalk

Improve the News Foundation -
0:00
/1861

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