'Perfectworld': Isaacman makes history with 1st private spacewalk

Billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis made history on Thursday, performing the world’s first commercial space walk.

The pair left the Crew Dragon craft in turn, with Isaacman going first. While outside of the vehicle, they conducted a number of motions to test out the mobility of their suits, designed by the Elon Musk-led company.
 

“Back at home we have a lot of work to do but from here, it looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman said shortly before 7 am New York time, as he emerged out of the nose of the vehicle and looked down at the Earth below him.
 

The Polaris Dawn mission also made history on Tuesday when the SpaceX Dragon capsule reached a peak altitude

of 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) above Earth, sending the crew farther than any humans have travelled since the

Apollo program that sent astronauts to the moon.
 

Before the spacewalk, the capsule lowered its altitude to between 195 and 737 kilometres (121 and 458 miles).
 

The space walk served as the main event for the ongoing mission in Earth orbit. Launched early Tuesday morning, the flight’s primary goal is to test SpaceX’s spacesuits in the vacuum of space. Before now, spacewalking has been an exclusively government job, performed by astronauts from government agencies or nation states, but Isaacman and Gillis are private astronauts. Isaacman provided development funding for the mission, but has declined to say how much he contributed. Polaris Dawn’s four-person crew also include Anna Menon, another lead SpaceX engineer, and Scott “Kidd” Poteet, a former US Air Force pilot.