Jared Isaacman, the commercial astronaut, founder of Shift4 Payments and self-made billionaire, will likely be confirmed as the administrator of NASA before the end of the year.
With strong bipartisan support, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation voted in favor of confirming Isaacman to serve as NASA administrator on Monday evening.
The next and final vote likely happen in the Senate before congressmen leave for Christmas.
During his Senate confirmation hearing last Wednesday, Isaacman said, “I want to assure you, senators, I am not here for personal gain, to favor or enrich contractors, to close centers or disrupt programs that are essential to completing America’s objectives in space.”
Instead, Isaacman plans on bringing “urgency and extreme focus to the mission” by “working with the best and the brightest at NASA to lead humanities efforts, to unlock the secrets of the universe and ensure American leadership across the last great frontier.”
Specifically, Isaacman promised:
- The success of the Artemis Program
- A return to the moon — before China
- An enduring presence on the moon to understand its scientific, economic and national security value
- The next scientific leap further into space
- Investment into nuclear propulsion and surface power programs
- Future missions to Mars and beyond, partnered with companies pioneering reusable rockets
- An orbital economy in space
“This is not a time for delay, but a time for action,” Isaacman said Wednesday. “Because if we fall behind, if we make a mistake, we may never catch up, and the consequences could shift the balances of power here on Earth.”
Highlights from the confirmation hearing
When asked if his relationship with Elon Musk would be a conflict of interest as NASA administrator, Isaacman said his relationship with Musk came from his experience leading “two missions to space at SpaceX.”
He added that SpaceX is currently “the only organization that can send astronauts to and from space, since the shuttle was retired.”
“In that respect, my relationship (with Musk) is no different than that of NASA,” he said.
When asked about donations Isaacman had made to Republicans, he said, “It shouldn’t be surprising that I supported the Republican Party.” In the past, Isaacman has donated to Democrats as well.
At another point, Isaacman said as administrator, he would like to shift NASA’s focus slightly to do what the space industry cannot.
“I don’t think NASA is doing its best when it’s doing what industry is doing, because at that point, talent would naturally probably gravitate to industry,” he said. “I think NASA should constantly be re-calibrating to work on the near-impossible, what no one else is doing, which is going to attract that kind of talent to work on that exciting technology.”
When NASA perfects a problem, Isaacman said the administration should “hand it off to industry and recalibrate to work on the next big, bold endeavor.”
Isaacman promises to make NASA more efficient
Isaacman has criticized inefficiencies and regulations that bog down the speed of innovation at NASA.
Some inefficiencies include the agency’s 40-year-old spacesuits, which require “hundreds of millions of dollars for just upkeep ... and they leak,” he told former Navy Seal Shawn Ryan in an interview in September.
NASA is underperforming in aeronautics, because they’re doing too many “little things that were not necessarily the reason the agency was created,” he told Ryan.
Isaacman said the aeronautics program should be focused on making things “that go super high, super fast” and have “radical designs, that if you figure out something pretty wild from, have direct influence over DoD designs or commercial designs. They should be at the absolute tip of the spear of breaking ground on aeronautics.”
During his confirmation hearing, Isaacman promised to “absolutely maximize every dollar that comes to the agency.”
Why did Trump originally pull Isaacman’s nomination?
There is speculation Trump pulled Isaacman’s nomination in May over personal disagreements he was having with then-DOGE head Musk.
Isaacman said the nomination pull didn’t have to do with his own ability to lead NASA, in an interview from September with Ryan.
“I think that there was a very widely covered falling out between some pretty important people, and I became a good target as a parting shot in that whole divorce,” he said, referencing Trump and Musk’s June 5 breakup.