Former Administrator Nominee Isaacman On NASA And His Future

NASA Administrator nominee Jared Isaacman never had a chance to lead the agency, but he spent the last six months planning reforms to focus on three core missions: human deep-space exploration, building the orbital economy and replacing flagship science programs with more frequent and far less expensive missions that return data sooner.

Absent a confirmed administrator, NASA acting chief Janet Petro is left without political cachet to push back on Trump administration plans to shave the agency’s budget by nearly 24%, pare back International Space Station (ISS) operations and end dozens of science, technology and aeronautics programs.

Nominated in December by then-President-Elect Donald Trump, Isaacman won the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee’s approval to become NASA administrator in April. He was days away from a full Senate confirmation vote when the president changed course.

• Ex-nominee says NASA’s portfolio needs winnowing
• Isaacman is considering possible ‘next chapter’ in politics

Isaacman learned of his fate on May 30, the same day Elon Musk completed his assignment as a special government employee overseeing Trump’s controversial Department of Government Efficiency effort. Although the White House insinuated Trump’s change of heart had to do with Isaacman’s past donations to Democratic legislators, that information is publicly available and was vetted before his nomination.

Isaacman, who has twice chartered private space missions from SpaceX, characterizes his relationship with Musk, the company founder and CEO, as one of business associates, not personal friends. But the perception of a close affiliation may have doomed his nomination when Musk fell from political favor. “It had very little to do with me,” Isaacman told Aviation Week during a June 21 interview.

Regardless, he does not fault the president. “Whoever gets it needs to be somebody that the president loves,” Isaacman said. “All of the politicians look to the [NASA] administrator to be able to push back. And if you can’t push back, they don’t need you, and you’re really ineffective at that point.”

In preparation to lead NASA, Isaacman, 42, resigned as CEO of Shift4, an electronic payments processing company that grew out of his first entrepreneurial enterprise at age 16. The resignation was effective June 5. Isaacman, a private pilot, also founded a second company, Draken International—now owned by Blackstone—that operates a fleet of former military jet aircraft for tactical training.

Isaacman also terminated his contract with SpaceX for two more spaceflights, once he was nominated. Those included the first crewed flight test of the Starship-Super Heavy launch system that is in development. Despite recent setbacks in the program, Isaacman expressed complete faith in the SpaceX team to solve the Starship’s technical challenges.

NASA is counting on a variant of the Starship to fly astronauts to and from lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon for its Artemis III mission, currently targeted for mid-2027. The White House wants the agency to retire its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, beginning with Artemis IV, and to switch to prospective commercial deep-space crew transports from SpaceX, Blue Origin and possibly other providers.

Isaacman said he was not involved in discussions about the Trump administration’s fiscal 2026 spending plan for NASA, a summary of which was released May 2 and followed by budget documents May 30. But he took no issue with plans to retire the NASA-owned-and-operated SLS and Orion, which have been in development since 2011 and 2006, respectively. The pair debuted on the uncrewed Artemis I flight test in November-December 2022 and are slated for a crewed fight test around the Moon next year.

A proposed 2025 budget reconciliation bill in the Senate directs the agency to fly the SLS and Orion through Artemis V. The flagship programs consistently win bipartisan support in Congress, particularly in districts with NASA field centers and primary contractors.

Isaacman said he found that even in die-hard space states like Alabama—home to Marshall Space Flight Center, which manages the SLS—legislators are open to change. “I was planting a lot of seeds with all the SLS political leadership from all those states of pivoting to nuclear-electric propulsion, and they were fine with it,” Isaacman said. “They’re not rocket scientists and engineers. They’re not saying, ‘No, the only way from now until the end of time is SLS.’ They just need something to pivot to.”

Isaacman also prepared for the challenge of reforming NASA. “From what I saw, there is a lot of bureaucracy,” he said. “Departments with four people have a chief and a deputy chief. A lot of people show up to work every day at NASA because they want to change the world, but there are lots of people that enjoy the system of moving from deputy chief to chief to associate deputy principal and up.

“To me, we need to rebalance to a lot more doers and a lot fewer of those who are feeding the bureaucracy,” he said.

For example, Isaacman found more than 50 different departments at NASA with the word “safety” in their names. “Safety is really important, but it should all bubble up logically into a single organizational structure and not have lots of safety offices scattered throughout the agency,” he said. “It needs some sort of liberation event from all that bureaucracy in order to get back to doing what it really needs to do.”

One area in which Isaacman would have pushed back is the administration’s plan to pare down ISS operations by reducing the size of the crew and the number of resupply missions in an effort to trim costs. He would have proposed instead flying more people—including guest scientists, similar to the shuttle-era payload specialist program—and broadening the type, number and expertise of companies involved in the emerging space economy.

He would not necessarily have asked for more money to do so. Rather, Isaacman again pointed to outdated, inefficient processes. For example, while Russian and private astronaut crews have brought iPhones to the ISS, NASA astronauts cannot, he noted.

“There are still way too many steps in the process to clear science and research experiments to fly on the ISS,” he said. “A lot of pharmaceutical companies—and industry in general—will tell you NASA is too difficult to work with, and they move on. You have to have a whole outreach effort that says, ‘We’re open for business. Bring us your best ideas. We’ll have the best minds evaluate it, and if it’s something that could really change the game, we will prioritize it so it’s potentially up there in months, not multiple years.’ ”

During his Senate confirmation process, Isaacman floated the idea of NASA possibly becoming financially self-sufficient through user-generated revenue programs similar to the FAA’s Airport and Airway Trust Fund. “We’re never going to build the future we all want in space if it’s entirely taxpayer-funded,” Isaacman told Aviation Week.

The entrepreneur also sees no issue with NASA accepting private philanthropic donations—and he volunteered funds himself—to supplement public funding, particularly for science. “Telescopes used to be done that way—land is donated to the National Park Service, houses are donated, and we even have an example of a giant airplane being donated right now,” Isaacman added, referring to Qatar’s gift of a luxury Boeing 747 to become Trump’s Air Force One.

The administration’s budget proposal halves funding for NASA’s science, technology and aeronautics programs. “We’re in a tight budgetary environment, and we’ve got to look at all spending,” Isaacman said. “Being under tighter circumstances is a good forcing function to figure out what’s broken so you can concentrate resources where it matters.

“But if it really came down to it, where a mistake would be made—such as with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is almost finished, reasonably on budget and, from what I saw, was going to be potentially cut solely for the cost of the launch—I could launch that if need be,” he said. “I was going to set that tone. That’s not the right way. That’s the last resort to not waste good opportunities for science.”

Isaacman proposed that NASA provide launch, a common spacecraft bus and other services to academic and research partners that would build and operate sensors, telescopes and other instruments for science missions. “Embry-Riddle spends hundreds of millions of dollars on their airplanes to increase the competitiveness of their school,” he said. “A lot of schools spend lots of money on their football programs. Why wouldn’t a handful of schools do that in planetary science, for example?”

NASA’s aeronautics program, also facing a 50% budget cut, is another part of the agency’s portfolio that needs to be rebuilt, said Isaacman, a private pilot with more than 7,000 hr. of flight time on multiple aircraft.

“Even before this budget, aeronautics is just $1 billion of NASA’s $25 billion budget, so they already feel somewhat like an afterthought,” he said. “And if you don’t feel like you have trust and confidence from leaders to make the hard choice and say, ‘You know, we’re spending a lot of time and resources on some bad programs, and we’re willing to cancel them and wait until something else better comes along, even if it means some short-term pain,’ then what you do is perpetuate the s----y programs.

“The Transonic Truss-Braced Wing concept with Boeing was such a bad idea that Boeing canceled it, and NASA was willing to put $400-500 million into it,” Isaacman added. “NASA should work on the near-impossible, what no one else is capable of doing. If Pratt & Whitney can get 5% more fuel efficiency out of an engine to beat competitors, do it. That’s what competitive dynamics are supposed to do. Why do you need NASA to fund 5% engine improvements for you? If Boeing can build a 15% more fuel-efficient airfoil, why wouldn’t they do that to beat Airbus?

“Unless something flies really fast or it’s a radical design, NASA shouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “I think the fear was that if we cancel the quiet supersonic demonstrator, truss wing design or a bunch of drone programs that are 30 years old, . . . what if we don’t get something else? That’s tragic, because it is totally holding back what we’re supposed to be working on.”

In Isaacman’s eyes, the key to reforming NASA is to focus on its mission. “What are the two or three most important things we must get done right now, for the good of the American people who are funding $20-25 billion a year?” he asked. “There’s not a lot of talk like that. There’s talk of the 100 things we have to do, and we don’t have enough money to do them all.”

NASA’s priorities should be returning to the Moon before China with technology that can be parlayed for Mars exploration, using the ISS to expand the orbital economy and revamping how the agency manages and funds science missions, Isaacman said.

He will not be the one to lead NASA, but Isaacman is “gathering information” for potential future endeavors in commercial space—and possibly a role in politics.

“I am enjoying not having any adventure at the moment, but I’m sure I’m going to do something at some point,” he said. “I plan to take the summer to do a lot of family traveling and such.

“I am looking at where I could potentially contribute in the political landscape,” he added. “There was a high intimidation factor after getting nominated that I do not belong here, and the more time I spent, the more confident I got that I could be helpful. And if I feel like I could help, then I imagine it probably isn’t my last chapter in politics.”