When he was 12 years old, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman attended the week-long "Aviation Challenge" program at Space Camp, in Huntsville, Alabama.
"For the first time, I got behind the controls of an airplane when I attended Aviation Challenge," Isaacman said on Friday evening during an event at the US Space & Rocket Center. "I became a pilot because I thought that was the closest I would ever get to the stars."
Decades later, after founding a successful online payments company and flying to space twice as a private citizen on SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle, Isaacman has returned to Space Camp in Alabama on multiple occasions to meet with participants and share a bit of the awe that he had experienced as a kid. In 2022, a year after the first of these flights, Inspiration4, Isaacman donated $10 million to kick off a Space Camp expansion.
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