Trump nominates Jared Isaacman to become the next NASA administrator

President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday he has selected Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman and space enthusiast who twice flew to orbit with SpaceX, to become the next NASA administrator.

"I am delighted to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)," Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. "Jared will drive NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration, paving the way for groundbreaking achievements in space science, technology, and exploration."

In a post on X, Isaacman said he was "honored" to receive Trump's nomination.

"Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history," Isaacman wrote. "On my last mission to space, my crew and I traveled farther from Earth than anyone in over half a century. I can confidently say this second space age has only just begun."

Top officials who served at NASA under President Trump and President Obama endorsed Isaacman as the next NASA boss.

"Jared Isaacman will be an outstanding NASA Administrator and leader of the NASA family," said Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator during Trump's first term in the White House. "Jared’s vision for pushing boundaries, paired with his proven track record of success in private industry, positions him as an ideal candidate to lead NASA into a bold new era of exploration and discovery. I urge the Senate to swiftly confirm him."

Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator during the Obama administration, wrote on X that Isaacman's nomination was "terrific news," adding that "he has the opportunity to build on NASA's amazing accomplishments to pave our way to an even brighter future."

Isaacman, 41, is the founder and CEO of Shift4, a mobile payment processing platform, and co-founded Draken International, which owns a fleet of retired fighter jets to pose as adversaries for military air combat training. If the Senate confirms his nomination, Isaacman would become the 15th NASA administrator, and the fourth who has flown in space.

Fresh from orbit

More recently, Isaacman has taken his ambitions to new heights. In 2021, he flew to space aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on the first all-private human spaceflight mission in history, known as Inspiration. Isaacman returned to space in September as commander of the Polaris Dawn mission and became the first person to exit a spacecraft on a fully commercial spacewalk without the support of a government space agency.

He has logged nearly eight days in space on his two private astronaut missions, and is in line to fly at least twice more with SpaceX. Isaacman established the Polaris Program in 2022 and signed a deal with SpaceX for three space missions after his first trip to orbit on Inspiration4. Polaris Dawn was the first and will be followed by a second Polaris mission on a SpaceX Dragon capsule, and then a third mission slated to be the first human spaceflight on SpaceX's enormous, fully reusable Starship rocket.

Presumably, those spaceflight plans might be set aside as Isaacman takes the helm of the US space agency. In the top job at NASA, Isaacman will oversee an annual budget of nearly $25 billion, much of which is devoted to the agency's Artemis program, aimed at returning US astronauts to the surface of the Moon later this decade.

With delays mounting and China aiming to land its own citizens on the Moon by 2030, it's likely the incoming Trump administration will revisit the architecture for NASA's Artemis program. The agency's existing plan would use the government-owned, Boeing-built Space Launch System rocket and the Lockheed Martin-developed Orion spacecraft to send crews of four astronauts out to the vicinity of the Moon. There, the Orion crew capsule would dock with a human-rated Moon lander or, eventually, a mini-space station NASA wants to position in lunar orbit.

Then, at least two of the astronauts would float into the lunar lander, descend to the Moon's south pole, perform several Moonwalks, then launch back into space and reconnect with the Orion spacecraft, which would bring the crew back to Earth.

NASA signed a contract with SpaceX in 2021 to develop a lunar lander variant of its Starship spacecraft to ferry crews to and from the Moon's surface. SpaceX's lunar lander contact is now valued at more than $4 billion for the first two Starship landers. In 2023, the agency tapped Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, to build its own human-rated Moon lander under a $3.4 billion contract.

Holding sway

Isaacman, an evangelist for the commercial space industry, has criticized some of NASA's decisions on the Artemis program. In several posts on X, he questioned the agency's decision to fund two redundant lunar landers, while not planning for any backup to the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which costs $2.2 billion per copy, not including expenses for ground infrastructure or the Orion spacecraft itself.

The SLS is fully expendable, meaning none of its parts are reused, despite using solid rocket boosters and main engines that were previously reused on NASA's space shuttle program.

"Spend billions on lunar lander redundancy that you don’t have with SLS at the expense of dozens of scientific programs. I don’t like it," Isaacman wrote on X in March. "I will try to help, but this is why I get frustrated at two lunar lander contracts, when we will be lucky to get to the [Moon] a few times in the next decade. People falsely assume it's because I want SpaceX to win it all, but budgets are not unlimited & unfortunate casualties happen," he wrote in a separate post.

One of those casualties might be the SLS rocket. The program is managed by NASA, with suppliers spread across the United States and prime contractors working under cost-plus arrangements with the space agency, meaning the government is on the hook to pay for any delays or cost overruns.

SpaceX is designing its Starship rocket to eventually carry people and heavy cargo from Earth to the Moon and Mars. For the initial Artemis missions, Starship will launch without anyone onboard and position itself in lunar orbit for the arrival of the Orion crew spacecraft. It will probably take several more years to human-rate Starship to launch and return crews to and from the Earth.

Once flying at a high rate with reused boosters and ships, SpaceX projects the cost of launching a ton of cargo on Starship to be 100 times less expensive than the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. This might bring the cost of flying a ton of equipment to space on Starship below the price of a Tesla Cybertruck and orders of magnitude less than launching the same payload on an SLS rocket.

Canceling the SLS rocket would require congressional approval, and the launch vehicle has the support of lawmakers in several key states, including Republicans in Alabama, where NASA placed the SLS program office. And NASA is currently stacking the second SLS rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the Artemis II mission, which will carry four astronauts around the far side of the Moon on the first human voyage to deep space since 1972.

NASA has penciled in the first Moon landing for the Artemis III mission, which officially is slated for no earlier than 2026 but will likely be delayed to wait for the Starship lander and new commercial spacesuits to be ready.

For the Artemis II flight to happen in late 2025, or more likely in 2026, it will certainly need to use the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft. But there are other architectures that Isaacman and the Trump administration, which counts SpaceX chief Elon Musk as a key adviser, will be open to considering for later missions.

One low-hanging fruit for an early budget cut and change in approach might be the upgraded SLS Block 1B rocket, which NASA's inspector general estimates will cost $5.7 billion. This larger, more powerful SLS rocket is not required for the first Artemis lunar landing, or any Artemis lunar landing mission, for that matter. Another option might be to cancel the Gateway space station to be placed in lunar orbit.

My colleague Eric Berger wrote about these issues in October.

Isaacman's statement after receiving Trump's nomination Wednesday suggests a commitment for NASA to "usher in an era where humanity becomes a true spacefaring civilization." His statement also suggests a motivation to beat China back to the Moon.

"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," Isaacman wrote on X. "We will inspire children, yours and mine, to look up and dream of what is possible. Americans will walk on the Moon and Mars and in doing so, we will make life better here on Earth."

This post was updated with statements from Jim Bridenstine and Lori Garver, Dec. 4, 2024, 1:40 pm.