SpaceX employee, tech billionaire conduct first spacewalk in Polaris mission
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00:00730 kilometres from Earth, Jared Isaacman is stress-testing his brand new spacesuit.
00:09Peering out from the Crew Dragon capsule, he shared his first impressions.
00:13Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a
00:18perfect world.
00:19He's the first private citizen to ever walk in space, the climax of a daring mission.
00:26With less than three years to prepare, the tech billionaire led a crew of four, as far
00:30as 1,400 kilometres from Earth, aboard a SpaceX vessel, the furthest humans have been since
00:36the moon landings.
00:38The Dragon spaceship then lowered its altitude and depressurised its cabin before Isaacman
00:43popped out of the hat for just over ten minutes, followed by crewmate Sarah Gillis.
00:49The vessel has no airlock, meaning everything inside, including the two other crew members,
00:53was also exposed to the elements.
00:55It's as risky as every space mission. To give an idea, for example, the Crew Dragon
01:00capsule has been certified by NASA because SpaceX demonstrated that there can be just
01:06one bad event every 300 flights. Nobody would take a plane with one bad event every 300
01:12flights.
01:13Isaacman bankrolled the mission, estimated to have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
01:18He did it to help SpaceX further its quest to put man on Mars.
01:22I imagine, you know, a lot of people someday in the future are going to be, you know, maybe
01:26even families bouncing around on the lunar surface in their, in their EVA, in their SpaceX
01:30EVA suits, certainly possible.
01:32The spacewalk is only part of the adventure. The Polaris Dawn mission is also testing a
01:37laser communications system and studying the effects of decompression and radiation on
01:41the human body.
01:43The first spacewalks were in 1965. Until now, only the Russian, Chinese and American space
01:49agencies have achieved the feat.