SpaceX Inspiration4 commander Jared Isaacman speaks in Daytona

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The billionaire commander of SpaceX's first all-civilian mission spoke at his alma matter in Daytona Beach on Friday, laying out the experience and lessons learned to a gathering of students and officials.

Speaking at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Jared Isaacman said September's Inspiration4 mission he purchased from SpaceX was a life-changing experience that spurred his decision to fly atop more rockets in the future.

Inspiration4's Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule launched from Kennedy Space Center on a three-day flight with a crew of four non-professional astronauts, including Isaacman himself.

"Crew selection was one of the most important aspects of the mission itself," he said. "Everyday people can go to space and be productive and happy. You don't have to be a perfect specimen that goes through a rigorous, one-in-a-million-chance-type screening process."

Isaacman, a 39-year-old payments industry entrepreneur and aviator, commanded the mission and brought along healthcare worker Hayley Arceneaux, geology professor Sian Proctor, and engineer Chris Sembroski. The mission raised some $240 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and overall awareness of commercial spaceflight.

The total price of the mission was never disclosed, but estimates place Isaacman's out-of-pocket cost no less than $200 million based on average Crew Dragon seat prices, Falcon 9 launch costs, training, and more.

And while his mission, named Inspiration4 to inspire people's pursuit of spaceflight, was a major talking point of 2021, Isaacman said that widespread private access to space is still tentative.

"If you lose sight of that messaging, and people just see it as a big expenditure and a waste, we could see all this momentum that we've been gaining over the last couple of years completely reverse course," he said. "This is not set in stone at all."

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Isaacman's trips to space aren't done. He recently announced a partnership with SpaceX known as the Polaris Program, which is essentially a private astronaut office organizing flights on Crew Dragon and, someday, the first crewed flight of the upcoming Starship vehicle that will eventually launch from KSC.

The program includes three missions slated to launch science experiments, medical investigations, and several more private astronauts. The flights benefit the crews and SpaceX, too, as ways to test new company products and technologies – the first mission, named Polaris Dawn, will include the first Crew Dragon spacewalk as well as test communications using SpaceX's Starlink network of internet satellites in orbit.

Polaris Dawn is scheduled for launch from pad 39A in November, though Isaacman cautioned it could push to January.

"With the Polaris Program, it's a much deeper partnership now with SpaceX. The amount of research we're able to take up on this one is literally an order of magnitude more than Inspiration4," he said.

Looking back to Inspiration4, which was also his first trip to space, Isaacman said one of his favorite and unexpected moments were moonrises as seen from Earth orbit.

"I was expecting Earth to look pretty much like it did," he said. "What I didn't expect was the moon come around the sides and I was like, 'Man, we have got to get back there. We've got to keep going."

"How many more years do we want to wait before we continue to push out?"

Contact Emre Kelly at [email protected] or 321-242-3715. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @EmreKelly.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: SpaceX Inspiration4 commander Jared Isaacman speaks at ERAU in Florida