Jared Isaacman thinks NASA can do everything

Jared Isaacman thinks that NASA can simultaneously run missions to return to the moon and go to Mars, while also supporting current science programs and launching new telescopes, robots, and probes. How he thinks NASA can pay for this, when the agency is currently in something of a budget crisis, remains to be seen.

Here’s my breakdown of what happened during Jared Isaacman’s confirmation hearing, which began on April 9 at 10 AM ET and ran about three hours. You can watch the whole thing at the link below.

My main questions going into the hearing

Like so many others, I have a lot of questions about the future of NASA. The agency is stagnant, and I very much think it needs to change. Jared Isaacman clearly agrees, but whether he brings the kind of change NASA needs is questionable.

Going in, my main questions were:

(1) What will happen to Orion, SLS, and more broadly to Artemis, the plan to return to the moon? Trump has made it clear he wants to focus on Mars. Does this mean that Artemis will be cancelled? Or that Isaacman would cancel SLS, NASA’s boondoggle of a megarocket, in favor of SpaceX’s Starship, which keeps blowing up and hasn’t made it to orbit yet?

(2) Could there be a reorganization of NASA under Isaacman? What does he think about workforce cuts?

(3) Will Isaacman support NASA’s science programs, especially with the rumors looming of drastic cuts to the science budget?

(4) Will Jared Isaacman allow Elon Musk undue influence at NASA, or will he show a marked preference for SpaceX? I’ve given a rundown previously of Isaacman’s close ties to SpaceX and the company’s CEO.

Despite Isaacman’s refusal to answer many direct questions, I did feel like I got a sense of where he stood on some of these issues. Keep in mind, though, that this assumes he’s telling the truth, which you never can be sure of. There’s at least one situation from the hearing where he came dangerously close to lying in front of the Senate (in regards to his ties to Elon Musk, which I’ll go over later.)

The fate of Artemis

It looks like, at least for now, the Artemis program will move forward full steam ahead. Isaacman fully supported sending the Artemis II astronauts around the moon, and even agreed that Orion and SLS were the quickest way to beat China to the moon. (There was a lot of China talk.) However, he did also say that he wasn’t committed to SLS and Orion for the long term.

Reading between the lines, I’d say this means Artemis II and III will fly on SLS as planned, but starting with Artemis IV, NASA will look at other options (yes, probably Starship but there are other options here, Blue Origin’s New Glenn for one, which is actually an operational rocket.)

Isaacman did not state a commitment to Gateway, which is the space station NASA is planning on putting into lunar orbit (he said he’d love to have multiple lunar outposts, but that would require an unlimited budget — one of his few concessions to the fact that NASA needs money to do things). There was a lot of hedging here, with the end result being that he’s keeping his options open. According to Isaacman, nothing is immediately on the chopping block but he is willing to cut programs once he gets a full picture of NASA’s situation.

One of the main thrusts of Isaacman’s arguments is that he thinks it’s possible to return to the moon while also planning a longer term crewed mission to Mars. It’s clear that to do both with NASA’s current budget would require significant cuts elsewhere, but Isaacman didn’t make it clear where that money would come from.

One of his main questions was why it was taking so long, and costing so much money, to return to the moon (a question I think a lot of people share.) But what is less clear is how he’s going to magically make it cost less in the short term when that money is tied up in contracts and existing programs.

Budget cuts and NASA science

Isaacman made it clear from the beginning that he supports NASA’s science programs, and pointed out that he’s been a vocal supporter of the Chandra X-Ray telescope and offered to service and boost Hubble for free (an offer NASA declined). He also said he wants to launch more telescopes, more probes, more rovers. This is great.

But. Again. Where is the money going to come from?

There’s an excellent report from the National Academy of Sciences about how NASA’s infrastructure is aging, and the agency is at a dangerous crossroads. The recommendation from this report is that, basically, without any budget increases on the horizon, NASA needs to stop investing so much in new missions and put more money in the people and missions it currently has, as well as putting some money into maintaining its facilities.

It’s unclear how Isaacman is going to pay for all his grand ideas. I want to go to the moon and go to Mars and launch new telescopes and robots and rovers. But I also recognize that prioritization is important because NASA can’t do all these things at once. I’m not saying the agency can’t do more with the budget is has — inefficiency is rampant at NASA (remember how long it took to figure out what was wrong with Orion’s heat shield? If the agency moved more quickly, they could have shaved a year off that time.) But the turnaround required for a fundamental shift like this would be decades rather than just a few years. I just don’t see how it’s going to happen, and Isaacman avoided giving any specifics on how he would accomplish this feat.

That being said, Isaacman did say again and again that he wants to use whatever we have now, until it’s basically unusable, because we paid to build it and get it up there and we shouldn’t abandon it. While this was specifically said in relation to the ISS (which he supports keeping in orbit until at least 2030), I think it’s safe to extrapolate here to observatories like Chandra and Hubble, both of which are facing significant cuts.

Isaacman also was ambivalent about workforce cuts and didn’t commit to keeping all NASA centers open. Basically, from what he’s saying, he wants to fundamentally change the agency and cut personnel, all while running more science and human spaceflight programs. Oh, and he wants to purse nuclear propulsion and also put NASA on the road to being self-funded (which, what? Didn’t see that one coming.)

SpaceX: The elephant in the room

Multiple senators were concerned, as I am, about influence Elon Musk will have on the agency. Isaacman very deliberately and carefully tried to distance himself from the man and company, saying that SpaceX is a contractor and while he would take their input as with any other contractor, he would not be doing what they told him to do (I’m paraphrasing here.)

But Isaacman also said that he hadn’t had any communication with Elon Musk about how to run NASA, but would not deny that Elon Musk was in the room when he went to meet with President Trump in late 2024. (This was by far the most awkward part of the hearing, and a crucial one, when Senator Markey hammered away at Isaacman, asking whether Musk was in the room. All Isaacman would repeat was that he’d gone to Mar a Lago to meet with the president. The implication is that Musk was indeed in the room, but Isaacman wouldn’t confirm or deny it.)

For me, this is the biggest question mark.

The problem is that SpaceX is the dominant launch provider in the world right now. It’d be very easy to say that Isaacman is just going with the “best” company that can provide the cheapest services and favor SpaceX that way. But NASA has a remarkable history in awarding contracts to different companies that are at various stages in their development to ensure that there’s a robust commercial sector for space.

Even SpaceX has directly benefitted from this policy, and wouldn’t be where they are now without that distribution of resources from NASA.

I think it’s safe to say that Jared Isaacman will be the next leader of NASA. I just hope he goes into the job with an open mind and a desire to learn from the agency, rather than approaching it with a strong agenda of what he thinks needs doing.

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