Trump Names Private Sector Astronaut to Run NASA

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Donald Trump has once again broken the mold and has named a billionaire entrepreneur, Jared Isaacman, to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). 

Isaacman financed and flew two missions on Elon Musk’s Space X Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule. He started his company, Shift4 Payments, in 1999 after dropping out of high school. He sounds like an anachronism, a throwback to NASA’s glory days.

“With the support of President Trump, I can promise you this: We will never again lose our ability to journey to the stars and never settle for second place,” he said. He added, “Americans will walk on the Moon and Mars, and in doing so, we will make life better here on Earth.”

Now that’s more like it.

Reaction from the space community was mostly positive. Keith Cowing of NASA Watch says, “He understands science because he jampacked as much science as he possibly could into his missions. He understands risk – he’s taken it. He understands what things cost ’cause he’s paid for it.”

John Grunsfeld, a former NASA associate administrator for science who flew five times on the Space Shuttle, says Isaacman is “definitely an out-of-the-box candidate.” 

“He doesn’t have government experience, he doesn’t have previous NASA experience, he doesn’t come from the NASA contractor or the science side,” Grunsfeld said. “But it makes perfect sense when you think of President-elect Trump and Elon Musk.”

Indeed, Musk and Isaacman are close friends, and the awesome potential of a collaboration between the two bodes well for manned spaceflight.

New York Times:

Mr. Isaacman, 41, made his entrance to the space world in February 2021 when he announced he was financing a private mission called Inspiration4. Riding in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, the mission was the first in which no one aboard was a professional astronaut.

Instead of taking some of his friends along, he opened up the other three seats to strangers. He gave two seats to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, which treats young cancer patients. One went to a hospital employee; the other was raffled off to raise money for St. Jude. Mr. Isaacman personally donated $100 million to St. Jude.

The fourth Crew Dragon seat went to a winner of a “Shark Tank”-like contest run by Shift4.

“Jared will drive NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration, paving the way for groundbreaking achievements in Space science, technology, and exploration,” Trump said on Truth Social.

The thorniest and most immediate issue facing Isaacman will be the future of the Artemis project, which is supposed to return NASA to the Moon by 2026. It’s already years behind schedule and tens of billions of dollars over budget. The Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft have had one successful unmanned test run, going to the Moon and returning to Earth. In 2025, the Orion will be crewed but not land on the Moon.

The lander is still being developed by SpaceX and may set the Artemis program back again. Isaacman may decide to downgrade the Artemis program and move directly to Musk’s plan to go to Mars, possibly before 2030, although that is certainly on the far end of ambition.

Isaacman will run into the usual bureaucratic inertia in getting anything done at NASA. His enthusiasm may be enough to overcome the obstacles and compete on an even plane with China for supremacy in space.