Everyone went home except for Isaacman. Isaacman made it into orbit on September 15, 2021. Mr Isaacman himself is qualified to fly several types of jet fighter, including the fearsome Russian-built Mig-29, a . At age 37, Isaacman appears to be using his time to the fullest. Over the next few years, he opened more offices in Arizona and North Carolina. Isaacman, who made a fortune with his . Winds ESE at 15 to 25 mph. Next he hired Lauber, his buddy from Decho, who dropped out of the Rochester Institute of Technology to join the new business. It's definitely the most impressive aircraft I have flown. Banks issued cards to consumers and expected small businesses to accept them without any help, outsourcing the process to third parties like MSI. It feels like some part of me is left on the tarmac my stomach most likely, or perhaps a vital organ. Each of the crew will effectively pay $55 million for their seat and eight-day stay on the International Space Station. You have permission to edit this article. Low 43F. Six months into his job at MSI, he decided he could make the process faster, easier and cheaper. And as of June he is a billionaire, after taking his restaurant-and hotel-payments firm public. I dont know that thats entirely true, but my stomach or whatever part of me that had gone missing has returned. The mission flew using the Crew Dragon craft, designed primarily to transport NASA astronauts between Earth and the International Space Station. Inspiration4's Jared Isaacman and three others conducted a flyover of Starbase in two Alpha Jets, Booster 4 was moved next to the Orbital Launch Mount ahead . The top speed is Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound. News from UM, MSU, High School sports and more. Shift4s low fees relative to its main rivals Elavon and FreedomPay are even more attractive now as restaurants and hotels look for ways to cut costs. So he quit to start United Bank Card, the progenitor of Shift4, in his parents basement. Draken was established by Jared Isaacman at Lakeland Linder International Airport in January 2012. Isaacman is a pilot himself, and he used to fly as a member of the Black Diamond Jet Team, a civilian aerobatic display team. This will send the Crew Dragon capsule into space using a Falcon 9 rocket, taking off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Now Im here with a few other journalists, SpaceX employees and people who have supported Isaacman in his spacefaring endeavors to participate in the fighter jet training portion of the program. The world will come back to life, says Isaacman. Taking F-16s and experienced pilots out of combat to have them conduct drills at home was becoming unsustainable. He's also performed aerobatics at air shows and holds the world record for fastest round-the-world flight in a small jet, which he set at age 26. The mission will be opening shot for the Polaris .Programaims both to carry out human flights and to . You can easily see any kind of just normal human being like, You know what? He called the company United Bank Card, which later became Harbortouch in 2012 and then Shift4 Payments six years later. He was flying closely alongside three others, all in L-39 fighter jets, tearing along at 460 m.p.h. Last September, billionaire Jared Isaacman made space history with his Inspiration4 flight. "He retains a small stake in Draken as part of an estimated . Isaacman sunk money into Draken to buy dozens of fighter jets from around the world, with minimal investment from friends and former colleagues. And one man leads the charge to grow it; Jared Paul. "What a morale boost it would be for them. Success! Exclusive: Sam Altmans Backing Helps Community College Startup Raise $29 Million, Video: Richelieu Dennis of Essence Ventures Talks Acquisitions Endgame, Investing In Black Founders, Explore The Abundant Natural Beauty Of Alaska At This Luxurious Ecolodge, After A Devastating Hurricane, The Fort Myers Tourism Industry Is Bouncing Back Stronger Than Ever, Texas Looks To The Free Market To Tackle Housing Costs, Discover The Rich Flavors Of Turks And Caicos At This Luxurious Providenciales Hotel, Jared Paul: The Pied-Piper Of Pickleball Social Media, 6 Revelations From IDs Jared From Subway: Catching A Monster, Jared Leto Stuns In Gold At Givenchys AW23 Show. In 1998, along with his friend Brendan Lauber, who was two years older, he set up a small company called Decho Systems to design websites for local businesses. You only get so many flight hours, he says during a call from his Shift4 Payments office in Allentown, Pennsylvania, at 5 p.m. the day before a morning trip to his home in Montana. SUBSCRIBE TO MUSK READS+, A PREMIUM NEWSLETTER THAT COVERS THE WORLDS OF ELON MUSK, SPACEX, TESLA, AND EVERYTHING BETWEEN, This article was originally published on Feb. 5, 2021, "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly": Image Shows the Moment SpaceX's Starship Rocket Exploded, Elon Musks Starship Rocket Just Exploded, Minutes Into Its Test Launch, Ariel Ekblaw Wants To Go to Space So We Can Save Earth. Isaacman went into 2020 with a nine-digit net worth and grand visions of an IPO. You only get so many flight hours. Jared Isaacman is the CEO of Shift4 (NYSE: FOUR), the leader in integrated payment processing solutions. Florida's Lee County is welcoming a wealth of new hotels by the end of 2023. I feel balanced again, comfortable ready, I think, for what is to come. Phase two is learning the space walk. I appreciate the tremendous responsibility that comes with commanding this mission and I want to use this historic moment to inspire humanity while helping to tackle childhood cancer here on Earth, Isaacman said in a statement in May 2021. One of United Bank Card's first major clients was shipping company Mail Boxes, Etc., which hired Isaacman's start-up to provide payment processing systems for more than 4,000 retail locations. From the Big Story to the 3 Things to Know - we have the moment's essential headlines. And while any billionaire can go to space these days, Isaacman bought out the entire first all-civilian flight via Elon Musks SpaceX and went to space in September, raising $240 million for St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in the process. Jared Isaacman is an American pilot and businessman. In high school, Isaacman took a summer job selling computers at the now-shuttered retailer CompUSA. He says that as a kid he attended Aviation Challenge, a youth camp hosted by the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where he learned about military aircraft and got to use flight simulators. That was a pretty big life-altering moment, Isaacman says. NASA pays SpaceX aboutc $55 million for each astronaut who makes the trip to space aboard a SpaceX capsule, for context. Billionaire Jared Isaacman, founder of Shift4 Payments, has been to space as commander of Inspiration4. Isaacman took its name, along with its blue-chip roster of customers, including Caesars Palace and the PGA Tour. fighter jets and ultimately to form an aerobatic squadronthink Thunderbirds or Blue Angelscalled the Black Diamond Jet Team . Draken bought 21 of them from the Czech government for $770,000 each and spent another $500,000 per jet on upgrades to make them worthy sparring partners 77 Number of former military aircraft that . Those missions will eventually take us back to the Moon and put a person on Mars. Jared Isaacman pledged $100 million to St. Jude Children's Hospital, part of an initiative that seeks to raise more than $200 million for the hospital's efforts to cure childhood cancer. Well, Jared Isaacman, the Mission Commander, has a residence and his jets are here. The idea is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, says Isaacman, who founded Shift4 Payments, which processes more than $200 billion annually. Here's everything you need to know about Jared Isaacman, and why he is going to space. Im ready to come home now. Retired Generals Philip Breedlove and Jeffrey Harrigian participated remotely. Theyve also experienced a zero-G flight in a 727 airplane that flies in parabolas and gives passengers about 30 seconds of weightlessness at a time, and they spend hours training at SpaceX headquarters in simulators as well as a mock-up of the Dragon spacecraft. Its not a whole lot of time, so it really just comes down to maximizing it while you can. Adds Isaacmans older brother Michael, Hes a big believer that we all have a limited fatigue life, so lets do the most amazing things that we can while were alive.. He points the jet low and roars past the hangar, where people are outside watching and waving. This story appears in the November 30, 2020 issue of Forbes Magazine. Additionally, Isaacman was "supported by SpaceX mission control for the duration of the journey," according to the Inspiration4 site. The question many are wondering is why are they in Bozeman? His hangar in Montana is currently occupied by a Mikoyan . In November 2017, in its biggest acquisition to date, it purchased Shift4 Payments, headquartered in Las Vegas. Then, in 2001, Mail Boxes, Etc. Jared Isaacman is not likely to forget the day he almost died at 10,000 ft., back in 2011. In 2011, he co-founded Draken International, along with Sean Gustafson and Scott Poteet. One thing Scott also noted was the large veteran community in this area and said that they can relate and can handle a little bit of extra noise for the week. This is a long game, he says. Recently, he has commissioned three more flights from SpaceX, the California company founded by Elon Musk, in what amounts to a private spaceflight endeavor that seeks to open a frontier in commercial spaceflight with what he calls the Polaris Program. And so is The Kitchen, the largest online social media community in the sport. Billionaire founder Jared Isaacman is deep into training for the first launch of the Polaris Program, in partnership with Elon Musk's SpaceX. 11. He had to turn back 500 feet from the summit due to dehydration, but he vows to try again. By Alex Seitz-Wald. The MiG-29 is the most high-performance aircraft Ive ever operated, he said. I knew we would fly fast and forceful. Entrepreneur Tade Oyerinde had the original idea for Campus, a national community college startup, five years ago when he met an adjunct professor who was so broke he slept on the floor of his UCLA office. The other is Air USA, another company that provides aggressor squads to train U.S. military pilots, but Isaacman said he doubted their planes are still airworthy. (Video: James Cornsilk/TWP). Alex Seitz-Wald is a senior politics reporter for NBC News. To prepare, his crew has already been scuba diving, which simulates weightlessness, and summited the more than 19,000-foot-high Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador as a team-building exercise. To sign up to take credit cards 21 years ago, it was the same amount of paperwork as getting a commercial mortgage, Isaacman says. That was the single most transformative acquisition weve ever done, he says. Federal Aviation Administration records show only two MiG-29 owners in the U.S. . The third mission will be the first human spaceflight. Now the billionaire amateur pilot will fly the first-ever all-civilian mission to space, with SpaceX. The company had reported record revenues of $731 million, though it was still losing money. But perhaps the most daring part of what they call the Polaris Dawn mission is that they intend to attempt a spacewalk and become the first private citizens to do so. January 12, 2012 By Dan Namowitz. (His first effort, in 2008, failed when he was delayed by officials in India.). Each pass gives me more confidence. As a side note, I had exchanged emails with him numerous times back around 2011, when Draken was just getting off the ground. Lots of pilots feel that way by mid-Januarybut as the founder and a member of the Lakeland, Fla.-based Black Diamond Jet Team . Isaacman will fly on a craft similar to this one. . Immerse yourself in the cuisine of Turks and Caicos at Rock House. So he takes the crew to the mountains, where people are unhappy and cold and wet. And in rollicking fighter jet rides that simulate the gravitational force of a rocket taking off or reentering Earths atmosphere. Even from his perch in the IT department, Isaacman could see that the process was cumbersome and expensive. Get the latest headlines on local sports! Forbes describes the businessman as a "thrill seeker who made his fortune training fighter pilots". In addition to making the 38-year-old Isaacman's boyhood dreams come true, the mission, dubbed Inspiration4, is also a charitable endeavor to highlight an effort to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital to fight childhood cancer. This is a personal aircraft, so it has nothing to do with Draken, and it is really for my own personal enjoyment, but I certainly plan to bring it to airshows so others can view the performance of this unique bird. (Video: James Cornsilk/TWP), The Washington Post's Christian Davenport describes what it was like to fly in a MiG-29. Isaacman shares this title along with the three other passengers on board SpaceX's trip to orbit Earth. Generally clear. Seven months after the Shift4 deal, he signed a first-of-its-kind $280 million contract to train Air Force pilots at Nellis over five years. Shfit4 Payments is like PayPal, in that it provides a secure payment processing portal. Pickleball is experience explosive growth, driven by grassroots program development at parks and clubs around the country. With most of the air-show team onboard, they founded Draken International to make that plan a reality. Four years ago, he founded Draken International . The second crew member was Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Is this company even going to be here? By the last week of March, transactions at Shift4s 125,000 restaurant customers were down 74% compared to the first week of February, while its 21,000 hotels were down 86%. Can NHRAs Tony Schumacher Drive Stock Cars? "In order to prevent predators such as Jared, there has to be a higher level of public action and understanding.". Still, Isaacman, who has been sending medical kits and Starlink internet satellite dishes to Ukraine, said that if sending the MiGs would be important for symbolic or political reasons to bolster Zelenskyy or to keep the West united, then he supports the idea even if it might not do much on the battlefield. It certainly won't be cheap: Isaacman has already committed $100 million to St. Jude's. The next of those flights could end up going to NASAs Hubble Space Telescope, docking with it and raising its orbit, which in turn would extend its life. At only 32, Jared Isaacman, who is why I'm here, happens to own the largest fleet of privately owned former military tactical jets in the world. . How will his next series of space missions with SpaceX - Polaris - differ? . Its the one place where were not in a simulator. On flying what is basically the highest performance aircraft in civilian hands: It's really incredible. March 17, 2022, 11:01 AM PDT. Four crew members have been chosen by Axiom Space for its Ax-1 mission. October 2, 2022 at 7:00 a.m . But it doesnt work that way in spaceflight.. They will be done flying overhead on the 18th. Isaacman is plotting overseas expansion and plans to move beyond his home turf of hospitality payments. When he needs a break from his nonstop schedule, he heads to his home in southern Montana, where he keeps his MiG. Just over a decade later, he put together Draken International, which is now one of the largest and most prolific private adversary support contractors in the world with a fleet of military jet aircraft that far surpasses the size of those of many entire countries. There are a dozen people within the Polaris Program but Scott said there are thousands with SpaceX that have a role in this mission, and each is vital. 24. While in his 20s, Isaacman performed in airshows with the Black Diamond Jet Team. But you should have seen Jared Isaacman as a kindergartener, growing up in New Jersey. Jared Isaacman is the founder and CEO of Allentown, Pennsylvania-based payment processing firm Shift4 Payments. The members of the crew will go through over six months of intense training. Jared is not a man who keeps hobbies but passions. He is worth an estimated $2 billion. We do a roll, flying upside down for an instant a topsy-turvy sensation that mimics the disorienting feel of space, where there is no up or down. "We're getting antsy here," he said. The MiG is no comparison to SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket. 36 likes, 1 comments - Mola News (@molanewsid) on Instagram: "Yuk Intip Kegiatan Turis Luar Angkasa SpaceX LUAR ANGKASA - Pemandangan dari luar angkasa dari k." I cover the world's richest people and how they made their billions. It brought us a large portion of the entire hospitality market.. Subscribe to MUSK READS+ for exclusive interviews and analysis about spaceflight, electric cars, and more. That's why he and his crew spent much of the past several months training for the mission with astronauts and SpaceX. And so when Isaacman levels the jet and asks me how Im doing, I reply that Im fine. Spaceflight is a difficult, scary endeavor that doesnt come with a game-over button. Isaacman, who made his fortune with a payment processing company he founded as a teen, owns what may be the only flyable MiG-29 in the United States, giving him a unique perspective on proposals to send Poland's old MiGs to Ukraine. Although Isaacman had never flown to space before Inspiration4, he is a self-proclaimed space enthusiast. In 2014, an opportunity emerged that was too good to pass up: His old employer, MSI, was looking for a buyer. Jared Isaacman, 37-year-old founder of Shift4 Payments, is chartering a trip to orbit and raffling a seat to a random winner to raise money for childhood cancer research. that trains pilots for the military and operates one of the world's largest fleets of privately owned fighter jets. Isaacman is a fighter jet pilot . Jared Isaacman in fighter jet training in Bozeman, Mont. This started with a mission called Inspiration 4 almost two years ago. But Isaacman views the concept as a metaphor for how to live his life. These four crew members are: Axiom Space's vice president Michael Lpez-Alegra, real estate and technology entrepreneur Larry Connor, investor and philanthropist Mark Pathy, and former Israeli astronaut Etyan Stibbe. When Will Roger Daltrey Retire? Isaacman founded a retail payment processing company, Shift4 Payments, in 1999 from his parents' basement. A billionaire astronaut who helped train U.S. fighter pilots loves his high-performance Soviet jet but thinks it's no match for Russia's newer planes. In 2011, he founded the . But his wealth soared in 2020, "thanks almost entirely to his 38 per cent stake in Shift4 Payments. The flight orbited Earth every 90 minutes along a customized flight path, according to SpaceX. Today, Shift4 Payments has its headquarters in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with more than 730 employees spread across eight office locations overall in the U.S., Canada and Lithuania. Right now the longest durations in space are six months to a year, the research they do will help prepare for multi-year trips. There was an error processing your request. 29. He was putting in his signature 16-hour days, roughly 15% of which he spent on Draken. 23. 15. . It is extremely rare. Then, I can tell, the flight is nearly over. 21. To keep from getting nauseous, I keep my head still, my gaze on the horizon, and watch the world twirl the ground where the sky used to be. But during a news conference Thursday, Isaacman said it would certainly fit within the kind of the parameters we established for the Polaris Program.. He started out flying prop planes, but within two years he wanted moreso he put in hundreds of flight hours to move up to flying jets. Kyiv has been pleading with the West to "close the sky over Ukraine," as a video accompanying President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's address to Congress stated Wednesday. He also has more . So he decided to take up a hobby: aviation. Midway through a crisis meeting on how to gradually transition employees to working from home, someone in the room broke the news: Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf was about to impose a stricter stay-at-home order the next day that would effectively shut Shift4s offices down. Local news headlines from NonStop Local Bozeman and Butte - delivered to your email inbox every weekday. Surrounded by rows of empty cubicles at Shift4s 80,000-square-foot headquarters, he worked 16-hour weekdays and 9-to-5 weekends. Slowly, he started devoting more time to flying jets. Polaris Dawn training at Bozeman Airport using fighter jets, Bozeman business donates $7,000 worth of Christmas toys, Montana State celebrates life of Sonny Holland, Bobcats Dominate W&M and Advance to Semifinals With 55-7 Win, Bozeman Symphony presents second annual Holiday Spectacular, Montana Tech students receive nation's top STEM scholarship, Temperature spikes likely to bring short-term flooding, NorthWestern Energy, Montana PSC discuss possible rate increase, 'Empty Bowls' feeds Butte, children in need, Man sentenced after embezzling money, manipulating man so he could pay it back, East Middle School student brings air soft gun on bus, Cascade Co. under stage 1 fire restrictions, Blackfeet Law Enforcement investigating death of woman near Heart Butte, Flathead City-County Health Dept. Jared Isaacman the billionaire CEO of payments processing company Shift 4 is buying three more flights with SpaceX, the first of which is scheduled for this year and could put Isaacman and . Phase one is learning the system and the ship. In addition to the website work, MSI needed help with computer security, so Isaacman offered himself as an in-house consultant. "I was poaching customers," he explains. 14. Its still an escape., A second wave of Covid-19 cases this winter could still put everything in jeopardy, but Isaacman isnt worried. Isaacman has flown in more than 100 airshows as part of the Black Diamond Jet Team, dedicating every performance to charitable causes, according to the mission website.. It can go very fast. One of their first clients was Merchant Services Inc. (MSI), a payment processor based in nearby New Providence, New Jersey. His first hire was his father, Don, who would soon leave his sales job as vice president of a home-security company. Reflects change since 5 pm ET of prior trading day. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. I was pretty calculated about it at that point, it just took me a little while to get it into motion," says Isaacman, the founder of Shift4 Payments, who is also an accomplished pilot. Jared Isaacman was one of the first private citizens to travel to space with SpaceX. Isaacman dropped out of high school and took the job though, his parents had just one condition. Once he got his foot in the door, he provided a service the Air Force just couldnt get enough of., While he was flying in air shows and jetting around the globe to buy more planes, Isaacman was still running the payments company. In 2010, his increasingly extreme hobby became a part-time job when Isaacman met Sean Gustafson, then a member of the Thunderbirds, the famous Air Force stunt squadron, whose pilot call sign is Stroker. (Isaacmans is Rook, for rookie.) As humanity looks once again to the heavens, this series examines the recent boom of the private space industry, the long-term ambitions of NASA and foreign space agencies, and the potentially profound implications of this moment for society. Keep reading for facts 11 through 29! Its just a testament to his desire and passion to make that happen.. I dont look at my watch again. #1434 Jared Isaacman on the 2023 Billionaires - Jared Isaacman is the founder and CEO of Allentown, Pennsylvania-based payment processing firm Shift4 Payments. In 2019, Isaacman sold his interest in Draken International for tens of millions of dollars to an investment firm and is now concentrating on his credit card processing business that has since gone public. (He set a world record in 2009 for the fastest around-the-world flight in a light jet.). That, after all, is why were here. "It's a big responsibility. Still, he looks back at the early days of his start-up fondly. Restaurant industry transactions rebounded by 45% by May from their low point in March, though hotels continued to lag. There are now over 5,000 UPS Stores in North America that all use payment processing technology provided by Isaacman's company, he says. On a purely technical level, I dont know how the good could outweigh the bad of bringing in those MiG-29s, Isaacman said. There are very few people who get that chance to fly a fighter jet as a civilian. "I was always really interested in space," he said, remembering being inspired by a picture book about the Space Shuttle in his school library, remembering exactly where the book . The historic Inspiration4 mission is the brainchild of Isaacman, who is 38 years old. Jared in front of his prized MiG-29. Gianforte continued his 56 County Tour across Southwest Montana, Butte Central Boys Win 58-46 in Frenchtown, Preview: Glacier Ice Rink Set to Host "Fire on Ice" Hockey Games Saturday Night, Emergency travel only in lake county is being advised, State Wage and Workforce Demand Data: Montana, Woman charged with death of 2-month-old baby in Great Falls, Man in stable condition after stabbing Wednesday night in Great Falls, Woman found dead off Highway 1 in Anaconda-Deer Lodge County, Last but not Least: GFH Football Trio Finally Ink Letters of Intent, Flags flown at half-staff to honor the memory of Montanas last Pearl Harbor survivor. Isaacman's love for aviation didn't just do him good but also helped raise $100,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. BOZEMAN, Mont. An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Jared Isaacman headed the first all-civilian trip to space. "At the time I was growing up, the F-16 . An AB takeoff is a real rocketship. This is the same inspiration as his effort to circumnavigate the globe at record speeds in a light jet, back in 2009. WASHINGTON Jared Isaacman, a billionaire and astronaut, may be the only American individual to own a MiG-29 the Russian-built fighter jet line that has become the center of an international diplomatic conundrum in the global effort to aid Ukraine. There's a lot to learn.". WASHINGTON Jared Isaacman, a billionaire and astronaut, may be the only American individual to own a MiG-29 the Russian-built fighter jet line that has become the center of an international diplomatic conundrum in the global effort to aid Ukraine. In 2015, the company was awarded contracts to provide training for the Air National Guard (ANG) at Volk Field in Wisconsin, for the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) Joint Tactical Air Control at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina, and at Twentynine Palms, California, as well as providing "adversary . "I don't know if I came out and interacted in public [with clients] until, maybe, 2004 or 2005," when he was in his early 20's, Isaacman admits. Winds ESE at 15 to 25 mph.. Generally clear. He started taking flying lessons in 2004 and just five years later managed to set a world record with his around-the-world flight in a Cessna Citation CJ2 that took him just under 62 hours, or about 20 fewer hours than the previous record-holder. In that time, the crew onboard enjoyed the view of the Earth from a few hundred miles above the surface. As a result, the billionaire jumped on the chance to become the first civilian astronaut. Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. The next big break came in 2008, when it launched Harbortouch, a then-futuristic touchscreen that combined a cash register and a credit-card terminal in one device. And, while the trip is expected to last three days, as Isaacman and his crew orbit the Earth, Musk jokingly told Isaacman in a press conference earlier this year: "If you want to stay up longer, that's fine, too.". It was years before Square, Isaacman says, rattling off a list of competitors that he beat to the punch. He then trades his Shift4 shirt for a flight suit and takes to the skies. 18. "Thank you to the community of Bozeman for allowing us to make a little noise.. it's very much appreciated to give us this opportunity,' said Poteet. He once set a speed record while flying around the world in 2009 in order to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which raises money for childhood terminal illnesses. The community of Bozeman and the airport is also very welcoming, so they said it was an easy choice. Brown bears, humpback whales, and bald eagles can all be spotted from the comfort of Salmon Falls Resort. The second mission will build on Polaris Dawn, but details are as-yet unclear. Isaacman was already flying high when he won his biggest deal yet for Draken. SpaceXs towering rocket is powered by nine engines that shoot the Dragon spacecraft into orbit at Mach 22. Want to see more aviation videos? The two air-show friends saw an opening: If they could persuade the Air Force to outsource that training to themusing ex-military aircraft from foreign allies that cost much less to operate, manned with retired airmen not on the military payrollit would save billions and enable the Air Forces best pilots to fight overseas rather than train newbies in the Nevada desert. He has flown in over 100 airshows as part of the Black Diamond Jet Team, dedicating every performance to charitable causes. 27. Ive never flown in a fighter jet before, but I have flown on a zero-G flight, and the sensation of being well outside my comfort zone and the fear that accompanies it is familiar.