Closing Bell - Manifest Space: Polaris Rising with Shift4 CEO Jared Isaacman 8/17/23

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

Jared Isaacman made space history in 2021 with the first all-civilian mission to orbital space. Now, he’s looking to do it 3 more times through the Polaris Program. Isaacman joins Morgan from CNBC Out East to discuss preparations for the maiden mission, his company Shift4’s partnership with SpaceX, and much more.

Jared Isaacman made history nearly two years ago when he commanded the world's first all-civilian mission to orbital space. Carried out by SpaceX, Inspiration4 was the brainchild of Isaacman, whose day job is running payment processor Shift4, which he founded at age 16. He is a pilot and co-founded private military training firm Drakken International and already has plans with a Polaris program to go back to space three more times. You have 10,000 extraordinary people with an unbelievable vision. I mean, like a vision we've never seen from a private company before. Like we all read like mission and vision statements on websites. Who says I want to make life multi-planetary because the world will be a more interesting place? Pretty incredible. So it all starts with a lot of people on a largely privately funded program to make reusable rockets that can bring people beyond low Earth orbit into the Moon and Mars and beyond.

Isaacman joins me from the Hamptons as part of CNBC's special program, CNBC Out East, to update on preparations for Polaris Dawn, to discuss the business opportunities for Shift 4, which has a payments deal with SpaceX's Starlink, and so much more. I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space. Jared Isaacman, thanks so much for joining me. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. There's always so much to talk to you about. For this particular conversation, let's focus a little bit on space. Polaris, Polaris Program, Polaris Dawn, what's the latest? The latest is we're making a lot of progress.

We're still hoping for the end of the year, but I suspect it will probably slip into the beginning of next year. And this should be expected. It's a test and development program. We're testing things that either haven't been done in 50 years or haven't been done at all, like a brand-new spacesuit, the first of its kind in 40 years. So a lot of testing to make sure you get it right. And anyway, it's making good progress. How's training going?

It's awesome. We had a little bit more free time this summer than we probably would have expected. And again, a lot of our training has to do with doing this spacewalk. And you need a new spacesuit to do it. So making sure the timeline of spaces space suit, you know, progress checks and deliveries lines up with training doesn't always sync up. So we've had a little

bit more time with family and work this summer. Okay. You're going to be on Polaris Dawn on this mission. You're going to be doing the first ever commercial space walk. You're going to make history doing it. How do you prepare for something like that? So well, we have a great crew and there's four of us that are all going to be, you know, getting exposed down to the vacuum of space and basically undertaking this spacewalk. So there's four of us getting prepared, and there's an army of 10,000 of the, I mean, the smartest, most motivated people I've ever met at SpaceX that are working to make sure it's safe. Because this is so important, because we can, you know, we can talk about returning to the moon or going to Mars, but when you get there, you're probably going to want to get outside your spaceship and do something, whether that's constructing habitats or just exploration.

And we're going to need spacesuits that don't cost hundreds of millions of dollars in order to do that, and we're pretty excited because the suit that we are testing out, the evolution of it someday could very well be worn by people that are walking on the moon or Mars. And it's pretty awesome to think about. That is pretty awesome to think about. I mean, you've already been to space. Would you go to the moon? Would you go to Mars? Sure, if I had the opportunity to do so. Absolutely. I'm completely bought in on SpaceX's vision of making life multi-planetary. I mean, it is that last great, you know, largely unexplored frontier. How could you not want to be part of, you know, some of the history they're making?

Yeah. Polaristan is the first of three missions. Are you already making plans or thinking about crew for two and three? So we are giving a fair amount of thought to Polaris 2. 3 is pretty far out there. That's the first end-to-end flight of Starship. So, you know, there's only been one kind of orbital test launch of Starship.

We all saw it look pretty spectacular, but clearly it's going to need a lot more launches, and that design is going to have to evolve to the extent that it's going to be safe for human spaceflight, which it'll get there. But until that time, we have Polaris 1 and 2. And Polaris 2, as we talked about, is coming up soon. Polaris 2, we are making some preparations for. There was some discussions on space Twitter about opportunities with NASA to potentially work on giving Hubble a new lease on life.

And there's obviously a lot of important things that are being discussed right now at NASA. And but hopefully they'll get around to this proposal and perhaps we'll have a pretty exciting Polaris 2 to follow. How do you, I just think about the role you play in helping to select a crew and craft a mission. And I know you work with SpaceX closely on this and in cases like you just mentioned, maybe NASA too. How does all of that come together? How much of it sort of starts in your head and then evolves from there? Well, I mean, it all starts with SpaceX, right? I mean, again, you have 10,000 extraordinary people with an unbelievable vision.

I mean, like a vision we've never seen from a private company before. Like, we all read, like, mission and vision statements on websites. Who says I want to make life multi-planetary because the world will be a more interesting place? I mean, pretty incredible. So it all starts with a lot of people on a largely privately funded program to make, you know, reusable rockets that can bring people, you know, beyond low Earth orbit into the Moon and Mars and beyond. So, like, that's the starting place. I'm just lucky to have, you know, basically be a fly on the wall and try to make my contributions where I can, along with the whole Polaris team. Coming back from Inspiration4, you know, which launched almost two years ago, we had discussions at Starbase with SpaceX about what a test and development

program could look like, what needs to be accomplished in order to, you know, get to the point where Starship is maybe the 737 of human spaceflight. And that's how the Polaris program ultimately came to be. You and I have had this conversation before of this idea that it's kind of like SpaceX and everybody else, what they've done to pioneer this new space economy. I mean, reports out just today, actually, from the Wall Street Journal that even in the first quarter of this year, SpaceX generated a billion and a half dollars in revenue and actually turned a profit. I would imagine you're not surprised to hear that, but you and I have had these conversations about space

investing, the fact that there's a lot of interest and a lot of excitement, but maybe not everything lasts. SpaceX aside. Well, what great news. Honestly, I mean, I am like a SpaceX Super Bowl, and I was shocked that they turned a profit in the first quarter. But I mean, I think it just speaks to all the different revenue streams. They've obviously evolved beyond just bringing payload as a launch provider into low Earth orbit. They're the only way NASA astronauts and commercial astronauts can get to orbit, which is a line of business. And of course, they have the largest constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit for providing connectivity all over the world, which, I mean, for sure, everyone was aware of Ukraine and that, you know, that horrific set of circumstances where Starlink, you know, played a part in helping restore connectivity. They just

shipped, you know, from what I understand, several hundred Starlinks, you know, played a part in helping restore connectivity. They just shipped, you know, from what I understand, several hundred Starlinks, you know, to Hawaii to respond to that situation. So, yeah, I mean, they obviously have a number of lines of business beyond just what a typical launch provider would have, and it's starting to show. And look, I don't ever really believe in winner-take-alls in business, but SpaceX certainly has a monumental lead. And while others are still trying to crack the code on just reusability,

I mean, they've got well over 150 launches where they've recovered the booster. No one's done that once. I think right around the time other people crack the code on that, they're going to be launching Starships, which is a total game-changer in terms of accelerating mass to orbit. Yeah. And of course, your quote unquote day job, Shift 4, also has a deal in place with Starlink, with SpaceX. Talk to me a little bit about what the opportunity looks like for

Starlink with Shift 4. So our number one capital allocation priority is following a very important strategic customer all over the world. And they certainly intend to be all over the world. They're actually in a lot of parts of the world right now. And once we get there, to bring all the other products and services that have made us successful in the U.S. into those markets. I mean, Shift4 for 24 years has operated near exclusively in the United States. We've grown revenue year over year every year for 24 consecutive years through the downturns.

I mean, we can win in the most competitive environment possible. Imagine when you take those same products and services, that kind of secret sauce that makes us special here, into Europe, you know, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Pacific. It's a massive TAM expansion. So we're basically following an incredible yellow brick road from a customer that, you know, that I hold an incredibly high regard and then bringing everything else that's made us special into those markets. Jared Isaacman, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. That does it for this episode of Manifest Space. Make sure you never miss a launch by following

us wherever you get your podcasts and by watching our coverage on Closing Bell Overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan.