Isaacman hints of future space plans
In receiving an award from a space advocacy group on June 21, 2025, billionaire Jared Isaacman hinted that his future space-related plans could include working with science organizations to finance scientific probes.
[Had he become NASA administrator he had wanted] NASA to partner with academic organizations on missions where such organizations would have had a bigger role in funding. “My priorities would have been leadership in space and the orbital economy,” he said, “and trying to introduce a concept where NASA could help enable others to conduct interesting scientific missions, getting academic organizations to contribute.”
That was something he said he might be interested in pursuing outside the agency. “I wouldn’t mind maybe trying to put that to a test and see if you could fund an interesting robotic mission, just to show that it can be done, and try and get some of the top tier academic institutions who want to perform. So that’s on my mind.”
He also indicated that he generally has no problem with the Trump administration’s proposed NASA cuts, noting that such academic organizations need to figure out how to work with less money.
Despite this statement, it appears he is still unsure of what he will do next in space. He has not restarted his Polaris Dawn manned program — suspended when he was nominated to become NASA administrator — and has said that right now he is more focused taking advantage of this unexpected break from work to spend more time with his family.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
In receiving an award from a space advocacy group on June 21, 2025, billionaire Jared Isaacman hinted that his future space-related plans could include working with science organizations to finance scientific probes.
[Had he become NASA administrator he had wanted] NASA to partner with academic organizations on missions where such organizations would have had a bigger role in funding. “My priorities would have been leadership in space and the orbital economy,” he said, “and trying to introduce a concept where NASA could help enable others to conduct interesting scientific missions, getting academic organizations to contribute.”
That was something he said he might be interested in pursuing outside the agency. “I wouldn’t mind maybe trying to put that to a test and see if you could fund an interesting robotic mission, just to show that it can be done, and try and get some of the top tier academic institutions who want to perform. So that’s on my mind.”
He also indicated that he generally has no problem with the Trump administration’s proposed NASA cuts, noting that such academic organizations need to figure out how to work with less money.
Despite this statement, it appears he is still unsure of what he will do next in space. He has not restarted his Polaris Dawn manned program — suspended when he was nominated to become NASA administrator — and has said that right now he is more focused taking advantage of this unexpected break from work to spend more time with his family.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
It’s hard to tell what his actual execution would have been like — actually managing such a big and unwieldy bureaucracy, reforming it, navigating the politics of the job — but I have to say that Isaacman seems to have had a decent sense of what ails NASA, and some good ideas of how to make it better.
(As regards the NASA budget proposal, I do think that while he basically accepts the overall figure, he would have objected to some specific cuts to specific missions — the sort like Chandra which he has has praised in the past. But it sounds like he would have just found ways to move money around by cutting other things to pay for them….even while bearing mind that he must appreciate that there was never any chance that Congress was going to accept all these cuts anyway.)
So I am still inclined to regret the fact that he did not get the chance to have the job. Maybe whoever Trump nominates next — General Kwast? — will do well in the job. But it’s hard to say more until we know more.
Richard M: I have always been very skeptical of Kwast as a likely replacement for Isaacman. Nothing against the man specifically. I am only suspicious about his suddenly popularity in the propaganda press at just the moment Trump withdrew Isaacman’s name. Smacks of its typical game of trying to get the swamp into power.
At the moment the only one who knows who the next nominee might be is Trump, and he ain’t saying.
An Air Force guy is the absolute worst choice.
I question the cost savings Titan was to have over Saturn IB.
Air Force wanted augmented solids–and we have been stuck with them.
Air Force having ABMA killed –and interfering with NASA-is unforgivable.
I don’t like NEP right away–prefer NTR or a combo with Stan Borowski’s oxygen afterburner.
Richard M,
I certainly don’t begrudge Jared some well-deserved downtime. There is a notable vacancy where Kathy Lueders formerly sat at Starbase but I would certainly understand if Jared wasn’t interested in jumping right into that. Whatever he decides to do, I hope it doesn’t mean cancellation of the rest of the notional Polaris program. He should finish that, go to the Moon and then embark as Commodore on the first SpaceX Mars expedition with humans aboard some of the ships.
Who runs NASA is, frankly, less important than who runs Starbase IMHO.
Jeff Wright,
Kwast was an Air Force space guy. Does that make any difference to you?
I question the point of arguing relative costs of two programs that were not really even in competition over 50 years ago and both of which are now as dead as doornails. You seem a bit like Charles II who dug up Oliver Cromwell and beheaded him two years after his death. At least that involved a passably fresh corpse.
I doubt seriously the USAF cared a tinker’s dam about “augmented solids” (SRBs I assume you mean). The USAF cared about what its contractors wanted. And all of its rocket contractors were doing dial-a-rockets based on ex-ICBM cores and more strap-ons than you’d find in a lesbian leather bar.
Killing ABMA probably was a bad move. The USAF has made a lot of them. I’d rate early opposition to GPS a lot higher on the abject stupidity scale. Even higher up is planning to build a next-gen “air dominance” fighter with a human pilot. Having no plan for a C-17 replacement is right up there too. Priorities! Anything showing in the windshield automatically outranks anything in the rear view mirror unless it’s overtaking or has a light bar up top – or both.
NTR is no solution to much of anything except maybe modestly faster passage of humans to and from Mars. But it comes at a premium price, is dangerous and would likely require a chem-prop shuttle to get people and things to and from the surface anyway. For anything further away, NEP makes more sense with continuous – albeit small – thrust and way higher Isp.
I don’t think the “oxygen afterburner” idea pencils out. It would cut the Isp a lot and we already know how to burn hydrolox without sticking a nuclear reactor into the picture. The idea has echoes of some early jet engine work that used a piston engine to drive a compressor and what amounted to an afterburner on the turbocharger exhaust. Some bright lad figured out the piston engine was superfluous as one could hook the compressor directly to the hot section of a turbo and eliminate the middleman, so to speak. I understand it worked out pretty well.
To get around the outer solar system in a hurry one needs an engine that can produce exhaust with as relativistic an exit velocity as possible – linacs as rockets. Maybe the power to do that could come from on-board reactors, but performance would be better if beamed power from the inner solar system was used instead. Good warm-up exercise for initial probes to other stars.
Love all the material science and related stuff, by the way. Keep it coming.
What was the reason for Isaacman being denied the NASA role?
Kevin,
That seems a matter of some controversy. The official response from the Trump White House was something quite non-specific about “past associations.” Subsequent scuttlebutt suggests that some prissy little narrow-gauge arse-kisser among the Trump courtiers had had a run-in or two with Elon and engineered the whole thing as a way of getting back at him. That certainly sounds plausible to me. Even the best White Houses seem to inevitably attract self-important flatterers and bootlickers who are all about the scheming and the backstabbing. And just where the second Trump White House will be judged to fall on any “quality” scale is still very much an open question.
Elon had made some enemies in the White House, but the principal mover in the Isaacman dunking seems to have been Sergio Gor, the Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office. Gor is a long time Trump associate and fundraiser, and he thus has his ear. Gor resented how Isaacman was peremptorily nominated by Trump before his office even had a chance to vet him or have any input. But even more than that, he really resented Elon Musk.
This is from Axios, but it rings with other things I have heard:
I don’t think Jared’s donations to Democrats in the past is what killed him with Trump. I think that was just the excuse. But Jared had made diffident noises about the NASA PBR, and unlike other Democrats brought into the administration he had no past friendship with Trump or a public exercise of loyalty to him before his nomination to protect him in Trump’s mind, I think. So I think he ended up being a convenient and vulnerable target when Gor and the anti-Musk faction in the WH were looking for a scalp to push back Elon’s influence.
Hi Dick,
My hesitation on that is that Jared isn’t an engineer. He knows software, but…I think that is why Kathy was such a good fit. She had plenty of (good) experience managing engineering teams on space hardware. She obviously also fit the culture at SpaceX, which — her and Gerst notwithstanding — is not something you usually expect from long-time NASA managers.
I have no idea who Elon will select to replace her. Maybe he already has someone in mind. But boy, it’s got to be a good pick, because it is a very tough and very important job. Elon has a a pretty good sense for these things, though. On the rare occasion when he makes a mistake, he figures it out before long and corrects course with a firing.
But yes, I’d like to see another Polaris mission, too!