I wouldn’t put Proxmire or Mondale down as friendly. They were most definitely hostile.

IMHO, NASA does not need budget cuts, NASA needs to be cut up.

Return the aviation related stuff to a NACA like org.

Separate space and space related operations. Call it the American Space Agency, or whatever name suits you.
Pull the the Office of Space Stuff (I do not remember the official name) from the FAA and fold it into the Space Agency.

That makes the new Agency in charge of planning and executing science missions and regulatory oversite of the commercial space sector limit the FAA to atmospheric regulation.

Get NASA out of the transportation business.

They should never build a new rocket again. SLS should be proof of this.
Since those science missions are driven mostly by the National Science Foundation, that should a source of money for developing new instruments and science packages whenever they push new projects.

Yes this is very simplistic, and would be way more complex than what I suggest. But the structure we have right. initiated in the late 50’s, now serves all of the missions poorly.

I don’t know what you saw on CNN but it wasn’t what you said. If that’s what CNN said, then that’s just one more bit of evidence for the case of CNN being a fake news operation. This sounds, frankly, more like something one would find in Weekly World News.

Venera 7 landed on Venus over 54 years ago and carried no camera. The first probe to send back an image of the Venusian surface was Venera 9. It shot stills, not video. There has never been a “drone” of any kind sent to Venus by anybody. There is no shortage of footage of drones exploding, but all of it comes from Ukraine and Russia, not Venus.

DEEBEE,

Your “logic” seems pretzel-ish. The enemies of both Trump and Musk have been trying to gin up some sort of “let’s you and him fight” scenario between the two ever since Musk threw in with Trump’s campaign last year. Musk is not “history,” he’s just not full-time at DOGE anymore per governmental special employee regulations. He’s back at his “day jobs” now where he will be making quite a bit more history I assure you.

agimarc,

I’ll readily concede that being a general officer of the non-woke persuasion during the bleak Obama years would have been no one’s idea of a picnic. If Gen. Kwast winds up running NASA I can only wish him well. The place is a mess and he will have his work cut out for him.

Jeff Wright,

My analogy is, admittedly, not accurate in one important respect. The battle damage to my notional B-17 would have been inflicted by the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe. In the case of NASA, all the bullet holes come from inside the aircraft as NASA – MSFC in particular – has repeatedly shot itself in the feet.

Proxmire has been dead for two decades. Mondale is more recently deceased but was last in any sort of political office over four decades ago. You sound a bit like lefties who still like to dig up Nixon’s corpse for some more ritual abuse every now and then.

As for Nate in the Space News comment threads, I wish he did own a machine gun he could train on NASA, but he doesn’t. NASA is dying of terminal incompetence and irrelevance, not the actions of outsiders.

I would suggest that most of the holes in NASA came from “friendly fire.”

I remember a school trip not just to the Space and Rocket Center–but to Marshall itself.

It was…mid/late 1970’s…a dismal time.

I remember an older gentleman…balding…older then than I am now.

I asked him why couldn’t the Saturn IB at least be saved…looking dejected, he talked about Washington wasn’t going for that…and how shuttle was going to be re-usable…rolling his eyes as he did so.

He was a Saturn man….one of America’s greatest men made slave to some punk’s idea of what MSFC should or shouldn’t do. The left hated Marshall, and the right turned on them in the end.

The names change Proxmire, Mondale, Nate at Space News–these are the folks responsible for the holes you see.

But as Ed Tom said, even in the contest between man and steer the outcome isn’t certain :)

Jared Isaacman @rookisaacman

I am incredibly grateful to President Trump @POTUS, the Senate and all those who supported me throughout this journey. The past six months have been enlightening and, honestly, a bit thrilling. I have gained a much deeper appreciation for the complexities of government and the weight our political leaders carry.

It may not always be obvious through the discourse and turbulence, but there are many competent, dedicated people who love this country and care deeply about the mission. That was on full display during my hearing, where leaders on both sides of the aisle made clear they’re willing to fight for the world’s most accomplished space agency.

The President, NASA and the American people deserve the very best–an Administrator ready to reorganize, rebuild and rally the best and brightest minds to deliver the world-changing headlines NASA was built to create.

I have not flown my last mission—whatever form that may ultimately take–but I remain incredibly optimistic that humanity’s greatest spacefaring days lie ahead. I’ll always be grateful for this opportunity and cheering on our President and NASA as they lead us on the greatest adventure in human history🇺🇸
https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1928995338729435432

Respectfully disagree. He graduated USAFA in 1986 and went into pilot training. He lived thru the post-cold war and Clinton budget cuts as an operator. He lived thru the O’Bama years as a GO and managed to keep the lights on. Even spent time in the Sandbox like most military did. I would say he has been thru the mill and can do whatever needs to be done. Cheers –

Seriously—putting an Air Force Man over NASA ranks right down there with making Greta Thunberg CEO of EXXON.

To steal a quote, airpower advocates were able to
“silence Clausewitz in WWI… to render him obsolete in WWII…to ignore him in Korea…to co-opt him post-Vietnam, and to celebrate his demise after the Gulf War.”

Medaris of the ABMA warned us that the USAF was not based on a mission—but a weapon…the airplane.

Instead of having Dyna-Soar atop Saturn IB—USAF wanted it all. They and their spooky friends interfered with shuttle. The Challenger Disaster started with segmented solids needed by Titans to match Saturn.

Not only did they not like Griffin, but they and their buddies at Aerospace Corp tried to freeze Elon out.

If you want to kill American Spaceflight for good—yeah—you go ahead and put a Blue-Suit in as NASA Chief.

A flat earthier in that office couldn’t do any more damage.

mkent asked, “I wonder which way things are going to go now.”

I plan to make my next prediction on this subject tomorrow (Monday).

Yup. I was skeptical at the time, but you called it. I wonder which way things are going to go now.

The brutal truth of things is that NASA has been fading in importance for a long time and this process is only going to pick up speed no matter who is sitting in the Administrator’s chair. NASA will be entirely out of the manned spaceflight business – except for buying rides – after two more SLS-Orion missions and its unmanned science probe component seems almost as rudderless and managerially incompetent as its manned spaceflight directorates. More and more even of basic science in space is going to be done via the equivalent of GoFundMe efforts by upstart wannabe Principal Investigators who would otherwise be casualties of the NASA science bureaucracy. Applied science in space, of course, will be entirely privatized within a decade as some of it already has been.

Gen. Kwast, if he turns out to be Isaacman’s substitute, is well-qualified for the NASA Administrator’s job by conventional standards. But, as a career military man, he’s never had to meet a payroll or oversee significant belt-tightening due to budget cuts – two items I expect to feature prominently on his to-do list if he gets the job. I’m sure he’d much rather have Gen. Guetlein’s job running Golden Dome but that billet is already filled.

For those wondering if Isaacman was sunk by the traditional space lobby, the answer is no. Not at all. If Kwast is the nominee (as anticipated) he is definitely not a friend to old space. He’s very pro-commercial space.

https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1928990950891634993

Did you look? Or just make assumptions?

Isaacman assured the committee that the behavior was in his past.
Still, while orbiting Earth in a SpaceX capsule in 2021, he placed the first sports bet in Las Vegas from space.

I think the guy is compromised.

I strongly suspect that the administration and Trump increasingly became dissatisfied with Isaacman’s take on the budget cuts. I also suspect that Isaacman himself became increasingly unhappy with their differences.

In fact, it is quite possible that Isaacman is now sighing in relief, glad to be free again to follow his own path.

That’s pretty near my working hypothesis, too; and, in fact, it may even turn out to be the case that Isaacman had a more direct confrontation with Trump, or the more “Trump-aligned” people in the administration behind these cuts, and that confrontation proved to be a final straw for Trump, or for both men.

Former Democrats like Tulsi, RFK, Scott Bessent, Musk et al had made a very public and voluntary sign of submission to Trump before he appointed them to anything. That was not the case with Isaacman, who, one might think, never had that kind of maneuvering room to begin with.

He does not deny that he wrote them.

Something like this needs to be taken into account for any individual to be placed in a position of public trust.

It may be that someone finally got the whole story on this and it cannot ne ignored which seems like was happening.

There’s something fishy in all of this.

All: We must also note that Trump has plenty of long time former Democrats within his administration, many in very high positions of power (Robert Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard come immediately to mind). He is not necessarily bothered at all with “prior associations”. What matters is his impression of where that person stands in connection with Trump’s goals.

I strongly suspect that the administration and Trump increasingly became dissatisfied with Isaacman’s take on the budget cuts. I also suspect that Isaacman himself became increasingly unhappy with their differences.

In fact, it is quite possible that Isaacman is now sighing in relief, glad to be free again to follow his own path.

You had no idea who Isaacman was?

Draken, Polaris Dawn, private spacewalk, raised St Jude’s $200 Million dollars?

Unfortunately, the public thought of him as “just another Billionaire.”

Too bad for NASA, I think he would’ve been great.

mkent: If true, then my March speculation was right on the money. However, despite what Trump says now, I also think that Isaacman’s apparent opposition to cuts in the NASA budget triggered this action.

“After a thorough review of prior associations, I am hereby withdrawing the nomination of Jared Isaacman to head NASA.”

Hopefully we’ll learn more on Monday. I wouldn’t be surprised if Eric Berger has a scoop by then. He seems to have the best sources.

I am going to be sick.

I disagree with Jared about SLS…but he was badly used.

All that time having to deal with DC when he could have been doing anything else.

I wouldn’t treat my worst enemy that way.

Bingo!

But then somebody must have done a real backgroung check on the guy. Oops. Bye.