Jared Isaacman, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump as the next NASA administrator, is the billionaire founder of payment processing company Shift4 Payments with ties to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and an astronaut who participated in the world’s first commercial spacewalk. • Isaacman, 41, founded what would later become Shift4 Payments at age 16 in his parents’ basement in New Jersey after dropping out of high school, which provides payment processing services and point-of-sale software to businesses. • Shift4 Payments now handles more than $260 billion in transactions annually, according to its website, spanning more than one-third of restaurants and hotels in the United States, with major clients including Hilton, Four Seasons, KFC and Arby’s. • Isaacman took up aviation as a hobby, learning how to fly fighter jets and completing a flight around the world in a light jet in 61 hours, 51 minutes and 15 seconds—shattering the previous record of about 82 hours. • He founded Draken International—which now owns the world’s largest private fleet of military jets and trains Air Force pilots—in 2011 alongside then-Air Force Thunderbirds stunt squadron member Sean Gustafson after the two set up their own air show squadron, the Black Diamond Jet Team. • Isaacman sold his majority stake in Draken for a nine-figure sum to Blackstone in 2019, and became a billionaire the following year after he took Shift4 Payments public. • Isaacman has traveled to space twice in missions arranged by the private spaceflight Polaris Program he established with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, with spacecraft, staff and spacesuits provided by SpaceX, including the Inspiration4 mission that flew to Earth’s orbit in September 2021 and Polaris Dawn, a mission featuring the first-ever commercial spacewalk earlier this year. Forbes estimates Isaacman is worth about $1.8 billion as of Wednesday. Much of his wealth comes from his 38% stake in Shift4 Payments. On Wednesday, Trump announced Isaacman as his nominee for NASA administrator. In a Truth Social post, Trump referred to Isaacman as an “accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot and astronaut” while citing his “passion for space” that would lead NASA “into a bold new era.” Isaacman said he was “honored” to receive Trump’s nomination and suggested there will “inevitably be a thriving space economy.” Isaacman’s second trip to space in September made him and fellow crewmember, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, the first private citizens to conduct a spacewalk. The walk, which Isaacman and his crew spent more than two years planning for, was scheduled to last two hours but only took about 90 minutes, and the trip took Isaacman further into space than any human since NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Isaacman’s trip was commissioned to test out new spacesuits, communication methods and research experiments that Isaacman says will inform future space missions. Isaacman told Forbes shortly after his trip he “did not expect it to feel the way it did,” adding it “gets really cold, the adrenaline starts flying and then there's some physical exertion because that spacesuit, when it’s pressurized, is very rigid.” He called it “overwhelming” to view the Earth from such a distance, and he said looking away from Earth into space is “not a welcoming, peaceful feeling” because “we didn't evolve to be able to survive in absolutely harsh conditions.” Isaacman, though, told Forbes there is “a lot out there for us and it just means we're going to have to work really hard and be well-prepared if we want to go out and explore.” Isaacman said his favorite moment on board was when Gillis played the “Star Wars” theme on her violin, a moment livestreamed using Starlink technology, and he said the scariest moment was re-entry, which he said felt like an “elephant sitting on your chest.” Isaacman has said his Polaris missions will contribute to SpaceX’s mission of sending humans to the moon and Mars, echoing Musk’s call to send colonizing missions to Mars. Isaacman’s first Polaris mission was the first of three planned missions funded and executed by Isaacman for space technology development purposes. The mission tested new extra-vehicular activity spacesuits developed by SpaceX, which were designed to be more flexible and cost-effective, and they conducted an experiment to determine whether the radiation in space can take X-ray images without an X-ray machine. Isaacman’s Inspiration4 was the first space mission populated only by tourists, and was commissioned as a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s hospital. 870. That’s how many miles the Polaris Dawn mission traveled from Earth at its furthest point. • Meet The New Billionaire Who Dropped Out Of High School And Flies Fighter Jets For Fun (Forbes) • SpaceX is about to send four people on a wild — and risky — mission into the radiation belts. Here’s what to know (CNN)