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Entrepreneur Jared Isaacman was new to politics, but not to space, when President Donald Trump nominated him to serve as NASA administrator last December.
Isaacman, a private pilot who spent part of his fortune on two orbital spaceflights with SpaceX, reportedly was days away from a Senate confirmation vote when Trump rescinded the job offer on May 31 on the heels of a raucous fallout with Elon Musk, an Isaacman supporter.
Isaacman publicly thanked the president for the opportunity, scheduled a family vacation and kept to the sidelines for the next several months. He did not return as CEO of his electronic payments processing company, Shift4—a position he had relinquished in preparation for government service. As he weighed his next move, the idea of running NASA remained appealing.
A political novice no more, Isaacman’s patience and continued support of Trump paid off. In a rare reversal, Trump renominated Isaacman on Nov. 4 to be NASA administrator, with no mention of the previous break. “It will be an honor to serve my country under your leadership,” Isaacman replied to Trump on X.
The renomination came the same day Isaacman responded to reports of a once-private assessment that he had spearheaded about ideas to reform NASA. The policy document, titled Athena, was “a draft plan I worked on with a very small group from the time of my initial nomination through its withdrawal in May,” Isaacman wrote on X earlier in the day.
“Parts of it are now dated, and it was always intended to be a living document refined through data gathering post-confirmation. I would think it is better to have a plan going into a responsibility as great as the leadership of NASA than no plan at all,” he said.
The plan, which Isaacman summarized in a long post on X, includes:
• Reducing layers of bureaucracy between leadership and the engineers, researchers and technicians.
• Increasing the number of spaceflights for astronauts and adding payload specialist flight opportunities for the wider NASA workforce.
• Returning U.S. astronauts to the Moon and determining the scientific, economic and national security reasons to support an enduring lunar presence. “Eventually, transition to an affordable, repeatable lunar architecture that supports frequent missions,” Isaacman wrote. “The plan does not issue a directive to cancel Gateway or [the Space Launch System],” Isaacman added. “It does explore the possibility of pivoting hardware and resources to a nuclear electric propulsion program after the objectives of the president’s budget are complete. . . . It also seeks to research the possibility that Orion could be launched on multiple platforms to support a variety of future mission applications.”
• Maximizing the remaining life of the International Space Station by “streamlin[ing] the process for high-potential science and research to reach orbit. Partner with industry . . . to figure out how to extract more value from space than we put in. . . . That is the only way commercial space station companies will have a fighting chance to succeed,” Isaacman wrote.
• Leveraging NASA’s financial, technical and operational resources to increase the frequency of missions, cut costs and lure academic institutions to contribute more to science missions. “The idea is to get some of that $1 trillion in university endowments into the fight, alongside NASA, to further science and discovery,” he wrote.
Isaacman would like to see the commercial services approach NASA pioneered for space transportation applied to its science programs. “Better to have 10 $100-million missions and a few fail, than a single overdue and costly $1 billion+ mission,” he wrote.
The Athena plan “never favored any one vendor, never recommended closing centers or directed the cancellation of programs before objectives were achieved,” Isaacman added.
“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,” he wrote. “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.”
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which voted April 30 to advance Isaacman’s nomination, plans to hold a second hearing on Dec. 3. The nomination requires a vote by the full Senate.
NASA has been without a permanent administrator since Bill Nelson departed on Jan. 1 with the rest of the Biden administration. Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been serving as acting administrator of NASA since July.
Editor's note: This article has been updated to include information about the second Senate committee confirmation hearing for Isaacman.
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