CEO of $8 billion company worked 2 jobs at once to lead a civilian crew into space: ‘You don't sleep a lot'that featured the first-ever all-civilian spacewalk, during which he personally floated outside a Dragon space capsule. He's also the CEO of payment processing company"I've had two parallel careers for my entire adult life, between what I do in my day job at Shift4 and my aerospace career," Isaacman tells CNBC Make It, adding:"You don't sleep a lot.
"It is a balance," says Isaacman."I basically just ate into a lot of my sleep. So there's a lot of nights and weekends that you spend at SpaceX ... The only time I was legitimately out of contact was about five or six days .". This time around, his training was more intensive — involving preparation and contingency work for deep-space issues like high radiation, micrometeoroids and orbital debris.
Once in space, the crew worked around the clock, conducting dozens of research experiments in five days while monitoring the capsule and its systems. Isaacman only got"a handful of hours" of sleep over the entire five-day mission, he says, calling it"a massive sleep deprivation event" for him and his crewmates.