What historic spacewalk means for commercial industry

Billionaire Jared Issacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis became the first two civilians ever to take part in a spacewalk.

Transcript

00:00I'm Conway Gittins reporting from the New York Stock Exchange.

00:03Here's what we're watching on the street today.

00:05The final pieces of the economic puzzle before the Federal Reserve's September interest rate decision came in view on Thursday.

00:11Wholesale inflation rose 0.2 percent in August, which was in line with forecasts.

00:16The producer price index was up 1.7 percent over the past 12 months.

00:20Meanwhile, applications for jobless claims inched higher for the week ended September 7th.

00:25The report indicates a labor market that is softening without a surge in layoffs.

00:31Shifting to other headlines, Elon Musk's SpaceX marked another historic first.

00:38Billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sara Gillis became the first two civilians ever to take part in a spacewalk.

00:46They each spent about 10 minutes in the vacuum of space.

00:49Such a feat is usually reserved for government astronauts with years of training.

00:53The auspicious moment came when they both exited but remained tethered to a SpaceX Dragon capsule hundreds of miles above Earth.

01:01After the walk, Isaacman said, quote, back at home, we all have a lot of work to do.

01:06But from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world.

01:09Isaacman, who made his billions founding electronics payment company Shift4, bankrolled the space excursion.

01:16Though he declined to say how much he paid, experts believe the cost was likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

01:22The civilian spacewalk marks a pivotal moment in the makings of the space tourism industry.

01:28For its part, SpaceX pulled off another risky venture which required new spacesuits and procedures to ensure the safety of passengers and crew.

01:36NASA Administrator Bill Nelson heaped praise on SpaceX in a post on X calling the moment, quote,

01:42a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and NASA's long-term goal to build a vibrant U.S. space economy.

01:50That'll do it for your daily briefing from the New York Stock Exchange.

01:53I'm Conway Gittens with The Street.