Jared Isaacman, the first billionaire to walk in space, says it wasn’t peaceful

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The first billionaire to have a a private space walk said it was not a particularly “peaceful” experience and compared his journey to that of explorers trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

Jared Isaakmanwho founded the payments company Shift4 (FOUR), performed the spacewalk on the recent SpaceX Polaris Dawn missionwho returned from space on Sunday.

“Looking at Earth was obviously very, very special,” Isaacman said in a talk hosted by Twitter spaces Tuesday. “But when you look to the side, you’re looking out into the blackness of space, and you see your spaceship there, and how grainy it looks, it gave you the feeling of ‘this is not going to be easy.'”

Isaacman described the space as a “harsh, very threatening environment.”

“It wasn’t something I would describe as peaceful, looking out into the blackness of space,” he continued. “It was more like, ‘If you want to be here, you’re going to have to put in the effort.'”

Isaacman made the comments after SpaceX said it plans to land an unmanned mission on Mars in two years and humans on Mars in four years. The CEO said he imagines looking out into the vastness of space today is similar to what explorers five centuries ago did on a mission to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

“You shouldn’t see that sense of danger and unwelcome as a deterrent, but it’s just a way of meeting the challenge, just as explorers have had to do throughout human history,” he added.

The Polaris Dawn conducted dozens of scientific experiments in space to study the impact on the human body and better understand how to make the environment habitable for humans.