A high school dropout, Isaacman founded Shift4 in 1999. In 2011, he founded Draken International, which provides fighter aircraft and training services to military customers. A trained jet pilot himself, Isaacman paid SpaceX an undisclosed amount to orbit Earth in a Dragon capsule in 2021. Earlier this year, during a second flight aboard a Dragon capsule, he became the first private citizen to conduct a spacewalk.
He seems…great. Isaacman is obviously perfectly qualified to run an independent agency with a ~$25B government with primary responsibility to launch, manage, and distribute Earth atmospheric, oceanic, terrestrial, and cryospheric data necessary for evaluating climate trends and updating models, as well as running planetary research and orbital astrometry programs, aeronautical research, and critical one-of-a-kind facilities for space vehicle development and qualification.
Isaacman is of course completely free of any business or personal ethical conflicts relating to this position, and will surely draw upon the vast knowledge and experience of aerospace, astronomy, and planetary science professionals across the political spectrum instead of taking his marching orders directly from Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)”.
Earlier this year, during a second flight aboard a Dragon capsule, he became the first private citizen to conduct a space stand still while poking partway out of the hatch.
JFK: We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things
Let’s do the other things. Yet say, how many men would it take to pour enough gold dust on the Moon to make a “T”? You know the Chinese are going to do a Xi or whatever as soon as they can.
He implies to the Moka-Coka company, for example, that rival soft drink maker 6+ plans to turn the Moon into a massive billboard, using a rocket to scatter black dust on the surface in patterns.
Since many of trump’s picks for cabinet positions and to head up departments and agencies in the ‘trump 2: egocentric bugaboo’ admin seem to be people he’s seen on TV, I’m surprised he didn’t choose Steve Carrell.
Officials at NASA were caught unaware by the announcement on Wednesday evening. They had been expecting the existing acting administrator, Janet Petro, to remain in place at least through the end of the year while a new nominee was put forth to lead NASA and confirmed by Congress.
Sources indicated that although Petro did not have a particularly high standing within the Trump administration, she did nothing to be removed from her position. Rather, it seems that Trump wanted someone he liked and trusted running NASA. This is probably a benefit for the agency, as it will give NASA a direct line to the president. For example, Duffy can text Trump if NASA needs something or is being treated unfairly during the budgeting process.
…
So buckle up. NASA finally has some clarity on who will lead the agency over the next several months, and it is a person trusted by the president. Duffy is also viewed as a capable leader and experienced politician who understands how Washington, DC, works. It’s possible that Duffy will listen to the concerns of leaders at NASA in the coming weeks and seek to offset some of the more Draconian (and difficult to understand) cuts by Vought’s office.
However, it is also possible that he takes his mandate to slash NASA’s budget and workforce seriously, and in doing so would be vastly more effective than Petro.
Realistically, I’m probably more concerned that an actor and ESPN commentator is the head of Transportation and much of the national infrastructure, than that he’s the head of NASA.
I need my bridges to not collapse and airplanes to not fall out of the sky, so someone with some engineering, routing, and signal communications knowledge would be good to have.
If our spaceships blow up, usually we just lose some money. Sad, but not as intrinsically harmful to the country.
NASA launches and operates most US weather surveillance satellites and a wide variety of geotechnic monitoring and Earth science satellites which provide critical dats for climate and weather prediction (formerly performed by NOAA although with recent cuts their ability to meet their mission os now severely curtailed), ecological and agricultural health, and various other capabilities used by various industries and agencies. This is just as important to economic health and prediction/response to damaging weather events as “bridges to not collapse and airplanes to not fall out of the sky”.
NASA, of course, also runs many scientific and exploration programs, and is so widely considered a crown jewel of American innovation that its abbreviation is a synecdoche for space exploration. The idea of assigning a completely inept director (again) and massively defunding the agency—not to any particular end of making it more efficient or effective but just to gut its scientific missions because they conflict with Project 2025 ideology—is just one more way in which the United States is being dismantled from within, turning from the shining (if imperfect) beacon of industry, innovation, and democracy to a despotic hermit kingdom run by a failed real estate developer and reality television star with an overinflated ego and a boundless appetite for corruption.
