First billionaire to walk in space opens up about challenging experience

Billionaire Jared Isaacman, the first billionaire to conduct a private spacewalk, recently described his experience as far from "peaceful", likening it to the challenges faced by explorers crossing the Atlantic ocean.

Isaacman, founder of Shift4 payments, accomplished the spacewalk during SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission, which recently returned to Earth on Sunday, Quartz reported.

In a conversation hosted on X Spaces on Tuesday, Isaacman described the experience, saying: "Looking at Earth was obviously very, very special. 

"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.'"

His comments come after SpaceX announced its plans to have an unmanned mission land on Mars in two years with humans on Mars in four years.

Isaacman remarked that gazing into the vastness of space today feels similar to the explorers five centuries ago on a mission to cross the Atlantic Ocean, the Quartz reported.

"You shouldn't interpret that feeling of danger and unwelcomeness as a deterrent, but it's just more to rise to the challenge, just as explorers had to do throughout human history," he added.

During its time in space, the Polaris Dawn conducted dozens of science experiments to study the impact on the human body as it tries to better understand how to make the environment livable for humans.