The first mission in the Polaris space program of manned flights by billionaire Jared Isaacman, using SpaceX’s manned spacecraft and rockets, has now been delayed until early in 2024.
Isaacman, in the podcast interview, suggested the delays were linked to the development of a new spacesuit required for a spacewalk, the first by a private astronaut mission, planned for Polaris Dawn. “We’ve had a little bit more free time this summer than we probably would have expected,” he said, which he attributed to the timing of spacesuit development and training. That effort “doesn’t always sync up, so we’ve had a little more free time with family and work this summer.”
That new suit, billed as the first new spacesuit developed in the United States in four decades, is critical to future human activities on moon and Mars, he argued. “We’re going to need spacesuits that don’t cost hundreds of millions of dollars in order to do that. We’re pretty excited because the suit that we are testing out, the evolution of it someday could be very well worn by people that are walking on the moon or Mars.”
This mission, dubbed Polaris Dawn, will use a Falcon 9 and one of SpaceX’s fleet of four manned Dragon capsules to spend several days in Earth orbit while conducting that first private spacewalk. Isaacman’s entire Polaris program includes two more manned missions,the second possibly aimed at raising and even doing maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope, and the third using Starship to go around the Moon.
Isaacman has already flown one private mission in space, in 2021, dubbed Inspiration4. It flew for three days in orbit, carrying four passengers, including Isaacman himself. Since it did not dock with ISS, it was an entirely private manned mission, with no significant government involvement.
