Trump renominates Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator
Billionaire Jared Isaacman
President Donald Trump late yesterday announced that he has renominated billionaire Jared Isaacman as his nominee to become the administrator of NASA.
Just as Trump had given no reasons why he had withdrawn Isaacman’s nomination in late May, in his announcement yesterday Trump made no effort to explain why he had changed his mind.
One week ago I would have said that Isaacman’s nomination would proceed very quickly to a vote in the Senate, as he had already been vetted completely in the spring and was fully expected to be confirmed within days when Trump pulled the nomination. Now however I expect the Senate might want to bring Isaacman back for questioning in response to the leak this week of a policy paper he had written in the spring outlining his plans for NASA should he be approved.
That paper, still not released to the public, apparently contained a lot of specifics about Isaacman’s plans to reshape NASA that appeared to raise the hackles of the many swamp creatures in DC that live off the government trough. Isaacman addressed that leak in a very long and very detailed tweet yesterday that outlined in detailed but general terms what his goals were in that paper, and it could be his reasoning in this tweet that convinced Trump to renominate him. As Isaacman concluded:
This plan never favored any one vendor, never recommended closing centers, or directed the cancellation of programs before objectives were achieved. The plan valued human exploration as much as scientific discovery. It was written as a starting place to give NASA, international partners, and the commercial sector the best chance for long-term success. The more I see the imperfections of politics and the lengths people will go, the more I want to serve and be part of the solution… because I love NASA and I love my country
These speculations however are all worthless. As we really don’t know the exact reasons why Trump pulled the nomination in May, it is difficult to guess why Trump changed his mind now.
It will be interesting to see how the Senate responds to this new Trump decision.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
Billionaire Jared Isaacman
President Donald Trump late yesterday announced that he has renominated billionaire Jared Isaacman as his nominee to become the administrator of NASA.
Just as Trump had given no reasons why he had withdrawn Isaacman’s nomination in late May, in his announcement yesterday Trump made no effort to explain why he had changed his mind.
One week ago I would have said that Isaacman’s nomination would proceed very quickly to a vote in the Senate, as he had already been vetted completely in the spring and was fully expected to be confirmed within days when Trump pulled the nomination. Now however I expect the Senate might want to bring Isaacman back for questioning in response to the leak this week of a policy paper he had written in the spring outlining his plans for NASA should he be approved.
That paper, still not released to the public, apparently contained a lot of specifics about Isaacman’s plans to reshape NASA that appeared to raise the hackles of the many swamp creatures in DC that live off the government trough. Isaacman addressed that leak in a very long and very detailed tweet yesterday that outlined in detailed but general terms what his goals were in that paper, and it could be his reasoning in this tweet that convinced Trump to renominate him. As Isaacman concluded:
This plan never favored any one vendor, never recommended closing centers, or directed the cancellation of programs before objectives were achieved. The plan valued human exploration as much as scientific discovery. It was written as a starting place to give NASA, international partners, and the commercial sector the best chance for long-term success. The more I see the imperfections of politics and the lengths people will go, the more I want to serve and be part of the solution… because I love NASA and I love my country
These speculations however are all worthless. As we really don’t know the exact reasons why Trump pulled the nomination in May, it is difficult to guess why Trump changed his mind now.
It will be interesting to see how the Senate responds to this new Trump decision.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
My assumption is that Trump got a lot of internal pushback, and was encouraged to go with the more conventional oldspace option. And I also assume that this was predicated on “you want our support, you need to support us.” And as usual, the support for Trump never materialized, and congress and all the usual suspects are sitting on their asses waiting for the revolving door and more money in their pockets, and Trump just said “I gave you your chance. You didn’t come through.”
I think it’s mainly a matter of Sergio Gor, who appears to have put the kibosh on Isaacman’s nomination after crossing swords with Elon in his previous job, now having a new job that puts him on the other side of the planet from DC.
Duffy seems to have very much wanted to keep the job, but made what now appears to be the error of throwing in with the NASA Lifers and the legacy contractors. Trump does not have what you would call a lot of respect for the business-as-usual types in and around government so that wasn’t a winning play.
Now there is a confirmation vote to get arranged or perhaps another confirmation hearing first. Given how disinclined the entire Congress seems to be to do its job these days, one cannot be overly optimistic about how long it might be before Isaacman can take the Big Chair at NASA.
I was on the fence about Isaacman, but now I see he is willing to listen to serious people (like our host, Casey Handmer, Elon et al.). That makes him a serious person too in my eyes.
Anything I have to say about Duffy’s deep thoughts on NASA is unfit for this site’s decorum so I’ll leave it to those serious people to say it, who can say it funnier anway.
Well, Bob Zubrin would just creep out kids visiting NASA, so….
Can we just have gravimetric engines and real-time Mars exploration or NOT? We KNOW that the US manned space program was “quietly” snuffed in 2011.
Hello Bob,
It’s possible. But given the sense that Trump is not a policy detail guy — certainly not in areas outside his own expertise, at any rate — I think that we must consider it was a more subjective, gut-level decision-making process. We know from multiple sources now (including Berger) that Trump apparently met multiple times with Isaacman in recent weeks, and Isaacman may have made an especially good impression on him, businessman to businessman.
And what Dick says about Sergio Gor points to the role that staff and friends may have played. Gor was no longer present to lobby against him again, but others in Trump’s circles may have made good arguments for him. The “last guy in the room” may have swung it.
Either way….I think we could have done much worse than Isaacman. I might disagree with him on certain points, and he has a steep learning curve to figure out the organizational rules and culture — he needs a good deputy and staff. We also are still not entirely sure how he will navigate congressional politics., which was the great strength of the last two administrators. But he’s not from the swamp, and he seems to be pointed generally in the right direction….and yeah, having been to orbit twice as a pilot and commander probably doesn’t hurt. Color me cautiously optimistic.
It might have been more interesting, as you say, to have seen him dive back into his Polaris program again. But maybe he can do some good with NASA.
Richard M: Based on numerous things Isaacman has written since his first nomination, and including many other things I have learned about him during that time, I remain unsure about what he will accomplish at NASA. I am therefore reserving judgment.
But, as you say, we could have done worse. Duffy started out well (reshaping the space station program in a good way), but then revealed his weaknesses, especially with his blind love for SLS/Orion.
My biggest hope from Isaacman is that he will look at that next manned SLS/Orion mission to the Moon, and decide it is too risky to fly manned. I suspect he might be the only man with the clout to make such a cancellation decision, considering he has flown in space himself twice. He can look stupid senators in the eye and tell them the truth, and they will have difficulty arguing with him.
From what I have heard (I don’t have time to dig back through my files just now, but perhaps tomorrow I can) the Commercial LEO Destinations overhaul had been in the works for a while; and it got an extra push from the Trump NASA transition team. Credit to Duffy for signing it, and doing it without delay; but it’s hard to know how much to really credit him for that.
But yes, otherwise, it’s best that Duffy is NOT the permanent administrator.
I share your hope! It would be a gutsy call, because he’s be pushing off a PR win on Trump’s watch, and that matters to the big guy, unfortunately. But making this an uncrewed test flight would be a far more prudent course of action. Cancelling the thing entirely would be a better one, but alas, Congress gets a very big say in that.
Eric Berger is interviewing Andy Lapsa of Stoke Space at the Economist Space Summit, and they are talking about Isaacman’s renomination. A funny quip by Berger:
“We learned that NASA Administrator appointments are like orbits. They start here, they go around here and you get loss of signal for about 90 days, and then they come back around here and everything is fine.”
Also, some news on the Vast Haven 1 space station flight article at the Summit: Vast’s Tom Shelley says at the Economist Space Summit that initial testing of Haven-Demo, the company’s satellite launched over the weekend, has been “incredibly successful.”
https://x.com/jeff_foust/status/1986153196390072359
Cancelling Arty II would be monumentally stupid.
But I expect such an opinion from Rand-rot
Should that fly an Apollo 8 with no problems, NewSpace gets a gut punch with Lunar Starship nowhere near flight ready.
That quote about NASA chiefs was humorous….but it reminds me of what Hayes Aircraft used to do–I presume as part of union busting….hire newbies and send them packing soon after by the time they knew what they were doing.
Thus the wisdom of an independent NASA Chief with the same tenure as SCOTUS members…only smarter than those robes.
Once again, pro-American tariffs are set up on by drool fools.
I saw this before following Katrina.
Conservatives wanted tax breaks… liberals wanted social programs and hated flood controls worse than libertarians.
Due to bipartisan neglect, we had a disaster that cost the taxpayer more to clean up than to fix—and water mixed with oil from submerged cars–and real environmental disaster.
But who did robes blame? The Army Corp of engineers who tried to warn folks and were ignored.
I have never had much use for the Rumpoles
Htos1av,
Not entirely, but the NASA-launching-people part did go away in 2011 – except, possibly, for SLS-Orion. The people-launching since was first farmed out to the Russians and, since 2020, mainly to the US private sector. The having-people-in-space part of the program continued, and continues, on ISS. What comes after 2030 is still an open question.
All,
Some good-news-if-true from Eric Berger anent Isaacman’s possible timeline to Administratorship. “Hearing good things about Jared Isaacman’s confirmation timeline, which typically would require a second Commerce Committee hearing. Seems to be momentum behind moving this along quickly.” Let us hope that’s how things work out.
Richard M and Robert Zimmerman,
I, too, hope Isaacman takes office soon enough to wave off Artemis 2 as a manned mission. That would be an eminently “take-charge” thing to do and also be an earnest of intent to do other outside-the-box things going forward.
Jeff Wright,
Nobody is talking about cancelling Artemis 2 – just doing the right thing and running it as a second unmanned test. If it fails, then we’ll have dodged a bullet and SpaceX can still, most likely, get us to Luna in time to Beat the Chinese[tm] on its own. If the Artemis 2 Orion manages not to glitch its ECLSS en route or burn up on re-entry, then it can be declared safe enough to carry crew on Artemis 3 – the same crew that would have flown Artemis 2 by my preference.
Lots of folks think I hate Musk–I don’t.
I have just seen this all before. Marshall builds a rocket that works–a rocket that is killed over the promises of some tiled thing that is going to be re-usable…and cheaper and…and..
Rinse, repeat.
Let me tell you a secret.
I don’t particularly like SLS either. The orbiters are gone, and the tanks, RS-25s and (yuck, I know) solids are all that’s left–because they work.
One individual who dogs me at another site loves to pin Challenger on MSFC…that was a boss–not the rank and file, who were abused.
You know who REALLY gave the world SRBs?
The folks who wanted to kill Saturn IB in favor of augmented Titans.
The USAF–that’s who. Because Saturn was ARMY.
SLS shouldn’t have had to exist, because STS should never have existed. There was a Saturn Shuttle looked at–but really….what was the Air Farce comfortable with?
Drop tanks–RATO units. That’s all shuttle was…Hustler on steroids.
The Soviets–dirty commies and all–they kept their R-7 and capsule while we failed about having to bum rides… because of a promise of some tiled contraption.
If only I had the power of the Q.
R-7 and Soyuz are discontinued, Saturn IB/Apollo fly and ASTP is between Apollo docking with Dragon.
A nice hand-off.
That’s as it SHOULD have been.
No Titan III, no segmented solids, no shuttle…no Air Force.
Just an Army Air Corps where combat air support was a real thing.
Instead–we got “not a pound for air-to-ground.”
So no–it isn’t just me being. MSFC homer.
My hate for the USAF is infinitely more deep.
Your view of Marshall is a bit selective to say the least.
Sure, the Saturns were impressive in their day, but they were also quite expensive and entirely expendable.
A suitably-engineered Shuttle could have been both a lot cheaper to fly and a lot more reusable but both characteristics were seriously compromised in order to get the thing done “on the cheap” – at least by the standards of cost-plus legacy makers. And it’s hardly as though Shuttle was a virgin birth where Marshall was concerned. Marshall worked on Shuttle – which at least flew – as well as on several notional successors to Shuttle, none of which ever reached a launch pad.
It has, thus, fallen to Elon and SpaceX to make all of the spaceflight progress accomplished in the last two+ decades. Fortunately, they have been up to the job.
Yes, in a narrowly functional sense, SLS “works,” but it can’t do so either frequently or economically and also cannot be retrofitted to do so. That is why it has no future.
On other matters, I’m no great fan of the Up in the Air Junior Birdmen either.
If it had been up to me, Saban would have taken over for Bryant with those decades in between vanishing too.
In this alternate history, MSFC likely gets dissolved earlier–as opposed to going out like Auburn’s Hugh Freeze.
I know–I say I hate sports…”Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in!”
I could see see in my mind’s eye, the last of the Saturn Vs on one pad, Lunar Starship on the other. The guys from Boca and Huntsville shooting the breeze…each looking over the other’s handiwork.
Saturn IB had its own pad in this scenario, with Falcon Heavy based at the D-IV Heavy pad…winged spaceplanes like we all want coming at the last—from microgravity metallurgy flying TO Earth from a factory in LEO
As for current events I think we all know this is really a case of Trump hiring Albert Brooks (Jared) to deal with Artemis (Bryan Cranston) in DRIVE ;)
“Don’t worry, don’t worry. That’s it. There’s no pain. It’s over… it’s over.”
Even the Saturn IB was expensive! $55M per launch — which is $413 million in 2024 dollars. Not sustainable.
And Saturn IB really is in the same class as Falcon 9.
One last not on Isaacman. Scientific American (I know, I know) had a story on the (re)nomination that, while inevitably biased, had something interesting in it. Namely, some comments on the record by Lori Garver:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasa-chief-pick-jared-isaacman-renominated-to-head-agency/
It’s ancient history now, but interesting history just the same; Garver talks about it a little bit in her memoir, but I have never read it. Does anyone know if the Obama 2008 NASA transition team plan ever was made publicly available? Given what Garver is saying, I’d be interested in reading it.
Richard M: I don’t remember any plan proposed as Garver suggests. What Obama did do during his term is issue a NASA space policy that was focused on everything but space exploration. See this 2010 post:
A quick analysis of the new Obama Space Policy
I suspect Garver is playing games with her memory, describing what she wished she could have done, but never was even allowed even a slight chance of doing it. The best she did was maintain the path started meekly by the Bush administration, to switch to the capitalism model.
Hi Bob,
Thank you for that.
I suppose what I am wondering is whether what Garver is talking about is some internal draft the transition team worked up, which was not reflected in the official Obama space policy paper of June 2010 (there being about 17 months between the two points in time in question). Your assessment of the latter, of course, was sadly on target.
Obama had to be the president least supportive of space exploration or space *anything* that we have ever had since 1957. And yet….somehow, amazingly, he picked Lori Garver to the NASA Deputy Admin, and one with more direct access to him than the administrator (Bolden) that Bill Nelson saddled him with. And somehow, amazingly, he backed her effort to go forward with CRS and Commercial Crew. I’m doubtful of his motives in doing so, but we got good results out of it, despite all of Congress’s efforts to slow walk commercial efforts to oblivion. Had John McCain been elected instead in 2008, I seriously doubt that would have happened.
I don’t care China gets to the moon next.
They will be doing nothing more than what the USA did 50 years ago. Unless they plan in staying they are just visiting.
The next real step on the moon is to stay and work outside a shelter for longer than 30 days.
Richard M wrote: “And somehow, amazingly, he backed her effort to go forward with CRS and Commercial Crew. I’m doubtful of his motives in doing so, but we got good results out of it, despite all of Congress’s efforts to slow walk commercial efforts to oblivion.”
Commercial Crew Program (CCP) was necessary because being dependent upon the Russians for our crews to get to ISS was an expensive embarrassment. Commercial Resupply (CRS) was necessary to get to CCP.
Taking Orion to an asteroid (probably why it was redesigned and became so heavy) was an idea that didn’t even excite the asteroid scientists. Obama set NASA adrift with no real goal (everyone knew the asteroid plan was stupid), and even Bolden said that the top goal was to make Muslims feel good about their contributions to science. What did NASA ever do to accomplish this highest goal?
I once did a web search to find Muslim contributions to science, and all I found was a decorative clock. I guess that can be something to be proud of.
Fortunately, Isaacman seems to think that his job as administrator is to streamline NASA into a better and more responsive organization. Clearly, he sees the politicization of NASA as a hindrance: “The more I see the imperfections of politics and the lengths people will go, the more I want to serve and be part of the solution… because I love NASA and I love my country”
Duffy, on the other hand, thinks that NASA should not be a science, technology, and exploration organization but a transportation organization, folded into his Department of Transportation. Commercial space companies have eaten NASA’s lunch in the transportation arena.
Hello Edward,
Well, *something* was necessary. But the plans as they existed when Obama’s team arrived in 2009 was to use a modified Orion launched on Ares I to start doing crew rotations to ISS in 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Constellation_missions
Obviously, massive skepticism was going to be needed about that schedule, let alone the costs of doing it that way. (NASA itself calculated that doing it with Orion and Ares I would have cost $24.5 billion; the Augustine Committee estimated that it would have been $34.5 billion.*) Which was what the Augustine Committee concluded, too. Still, it had backing at JSC and on the Hill, so that was what Lori Garver had to push back against in proposing to do it with a Commercial Crew program instead.
*Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/13/nasa-estimates-having-spacex-and-boeing-build-spacecraft-for-astronauts-saved-up-to-30-billion.html
I think even this is giving Duffy too much credit. The sense of many observers is that he simply favored whatever would raise his personal profile. Folding NASA into the Department of Transportation would have allowed him to keep going on Fox News to chat up what NASA was doing.
Richard M & Edward,
Ditto. One can hardly blame Duffy for being more eager to go see launches at KSC than devastation in Louisville, but one can blame him for indulging his preference for upbeat press opportunities at the expense of the national interest.
Richard M,
“I think even this is giving Duffy too much credit.”
Yeah. Maybe Duffy wasn’t thinking at all. His interest may only be to create a larger empire to rule — er — department to run, and now that he controls the prestigious NASA he may be eager to keep it under his own control. He may not have considered any ramifications or consequences or the destruction of NASA into merely a transportation unit of the U.S. government. The Department of Transportation (DoT) has little or no interest in space exploration or the technologies needed to perform such activities. Earth sciences, planetary sciences, and hazardous-asteroid detection are not the purview of the DoT, so how long would these continue to exist at a DoT-controlled NASA?
We should all be worried that Duffy has the thought of folding NASA into the DoT and worried that he is in charge of our most prestigious science and technology government agency. Obama and Bolden left NASA adrift through negligent leadership, so what can we expect from Duffy’s negligence?
Hello Edward,
Well, hopefully Isaacman’s nomination will be expedited through Senate confirmation, and Duffy won’t be there to muck things up much longer.