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Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA Administrator sparks excitement and questions. A billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut, he brings unmatched expertise in spaceflight and business. Yet, his ties to SpaceX and challenges like the SLS program and lunar ambitions loom large. Can he revolutionize NASA and lead humanity’s next leap into space?
Nominating Jared Isaacman for NASA Administrator is a breathtaking pick for the position and is stirring lots of excitement and some closeted amount of trepidation within and outside the agency and on Capitol Hill. He has a unique combination of management skills, government procurement experience, spaceflight program management, and in-flight experience that I dare say few could match in the history of the agency and the Administrator’s office.
At the ripe young age of 41 with an estimated net worth of $1.9 billion, Isaacman is the founder of Draken International, founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments and instigator and commander of the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn missions, two high-profile private spaceflights. Draken, with a fleet of around 150 warplanes, provides adversarial training services to the U.S. and European militaries, working with the former since 2015. It’s safe to say Jared knows government procurement.
Shift4 Payments is a publicly traded company – started by him at the age of sixteen – that processes billions of point of sale (POS) transactions annually for hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world. The company expects to crank through $166 billion in transactions through FY 2024, delivering an adjusted EBITDA of $688 million, both at growth rates of 50% year over year. Shift4 has grown through a combination of acquisition, application of the latest technologies, and optimization of its business practices. Fair to say Jared knows how to build, manage, and grow a multi-billion-dollar private enterprise, skills that will come in handy in the years to come. If he can apply those same skills at NASA, including bringing in and developing upper and mid-level managers, the agency is sure to benefit.
When it comes to spaceflight, Jared has literally put his money and his body into the pursuit, in the process clocking more orbital flight time than current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. Isaacman logged nearly three days in LEO on Inspiration4, and added nearly five more days on Polaris Dawn, compared to Nelson’s six days on STS-61-C. Polaris Dawn was the first of three planned private missions to push and test the bounds of commercial space technology and operations, conducting the highest Dragon flight to date and the highest altitude flight of any human mission since the Apollo program, the first commercial spacewalk that tested SpaceX EVA suits in orbit, and conducting Starlink laser communications with a Dragon capsule. The final flight of the Polaris program was to be a crewed mission onboard Starship. So, Jared intimately knows crewed space flight and SpaceX flight operations, including the risks and capabilities of the current generation of operational vehicles.
If you are not suitably impressed enough by Mr. Isaacman’s resume by this point, then pointing out his ongoing charitable partnerships with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and other organizations is simply a waste of time. By all accounts, he seems to be a nice guy when he’s not being a world-class overachiever.
Mr. Isaacman faces three perils as he moves onto Capitol Hill hearings and hopefully beyond to the Administrator position. The first one is dealing with Congress and its established interest groups, many of whom support the idea of a leaner, more efficient NASA, so long as it doesn’t affect the flow of funding to existing projects in their home states. Tough questions will be asked about Mr. Isaacman’s positions on SLS, Orion, returning to the Moon, and ultimately heading out to Mars.
The second peril will be his relationship with SpaceX and Elon Musk. Mr. Isaacman’s role in managing and executing SLS will no doubt be scrutinized. Questions will be asked if he can be a neutral broker when evaluating established NASA programs without showing favoritism to a vendor he’s intimately worked with for years. As co-chair of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Mr. Musk will more than likely turn his eye towards the long-delayed and very expensive SLS program but eliminating it would also presumably put more money into SpaceX’s pocket as a result. How SLS’s future plays out is sure to be challenging for all involved.
Finally, Mr. Isaacman will have to face an established culture at NASA that, to be blunt, has long resisted rapid change to the status quo. Alan Stern and Lori Garver both fought to change the way NASA operated, but without the advantage of being at the top of the agency and having steadfast White House support. Stern ultimately lost his battle to preserve science over politics while Garver battled hard to establish and fund the Commercial Crew that paved the way for continued multi-vendor/multi-source competition and the success of SpaceX Dragon to provide sovereign and reliable access to the International Space Station.
Listen carefully in the weeks to come for Isaacman’s positions on three topics: SLS, Hubble servicing, and China. As noted earlier, Isaacman will face tough questions on the future of SLS on Capitol Hill. How he presents his answers is as important as what the answers are. In the private sector, Isaacman wanted to conduct a crewed servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope but was politely dissuaded by NASA managers. Now he is the head “decider,” with apologies to George W. Bush, does he re-open the idea to a high-risk mission?
One of the driving forces for returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent presence there has been China’s plans to land there and do the same. What tone will Isaacman set in returning to the Moon, given the Great Powers competition framing and the incoming administration’s views on China? Will he install a sense of urgency and be able to secure additional resources for an increased tempo of cis-lunar operations and a permanent base on the Moon? Time will tell.
In an ideal world, Isaacman will be able to use one thread to connect the needles of improved government efficiency as promised by the incoming Administration, bringing Capitol Hill onboard as a participant to reshape the status quo, and getting buy-in from the NASA workforce. If he can manage to do so, he has the potential to pave the way for a sustainable return to the Moon and build a realistic roadmap to landing on Mars within a decade.
By Doug Mohney
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