"Earth sure looks like a perfect world," billionaire Jared Isaacman proclaimed last week during the first spacewalk ever by a private citizen. But while our planet may have looked perfect, it wasn't exactly a perfect experience for Isaacman and his three Polaris Dawn spacemates. The Shift4 founder says space was a "hard, very threatening environment" and not anything "I would describe as peaceful," per Quartz, which notes Isaacman compared his SpaceX expedition to "explorers trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean."
"Looking at Earth was obviously very, very special," Isaacman, 41, revealed Tuesday in an X Spaces forum about last Thursday's spacewalk. "But when you look off to the side, you look out into the darkness of space, and you see your spaceship there, and how gritty it looks, it gave you this sense of, like, 'This isn't going to be easy.'" He further describes his historic endeavor as "an emotional experience, a sensory overload," per AFP.
"There's the physical exertion, there's the pressure changes, the temperature changes—it gets a little cold—and then, of course, the overwhelming visual sensation, when you see Earth with no kind of barrier between you other than the visor that's in front of you," he added. Sarah Gillis, the SpaceX engineer who joined Isaacman on the spacewalk, celebrated the occasion by playing her violin while up there, calling that experience "so interesting."
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Gillis played "Rey's Theme" from Star Wars composer John Williams on a violin specially made to withstand the rigors of space. "You're just trying to keep it still enough that you can actually play successfully," she notes. Meanwhile, Isaacman took a more viscerally pleasant trip after returning to Earth over the weekend. "One more orbit around Epcot ... but this time I could bring my family," he tweeted on Tuesday, posting photos of him with his wife and kids at the Disney theme park. (More Jared Isaacman stories.)
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