Billionaire Space-Walker Dropped Out of High School

The world's first commercial spacewalk took place on Tuesday morning, a private operation bankrolled by the first person who emerged from the SpaceX craft. That would be Jared Isaacman, a 41-year-old tech billionaire who is now the subject of plenty of coverage:

• Dropout: Steve Jobs famously dropped out of college. Isaacman actually dropped out of high school before making his fortune, notes the BBC. He did so at the age of 16 because a New Jersey company for whom he'd been working part-time offered him a full-time IT job, according to a Forbes profile. Isaacman eventually got his GED as he worked out of his parents' basement.

• No regrets: "I was a horrible student," Isaacman says in the Netflix docuseries Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space, per the New York Post. "And I wasn't, like, happy in school, either."
• His fortune: Isaacman founded the payment processing company Shift4Payments as a teen, and it now handles payments for restaurants and hotels including KFC, Arby's, Hilton, and Four Seasons. Forbes pegs his worth at $1.9 billion. He also founded Draken International in 2011, a defense firm that trains Air Force pilots, and he sold a majority stake to the firm Blackstone in 2019.
• Thrill seeker: Isaacman completed the fastest round-the-world trip in a light jet in 2009, per the Post. The Forbes profile notes that he owns a MiG jet, which he flies "faster than the speed of sound" and "climbs mountains to unwind from non-stop, intense 80-plus-hour weeks."

(More Jared Isaacman stories.)