Trump has renominated Jared Isaacman.
This is good news if he doesn’t change his mind again.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Thoughts from Eric Berger.
[11-10 update]
A post on X that Jared posted just before the announcement:
It is unfortunate that NASA’s team and the broader space community have to endured distractions like this. There are extraordinary opportunities and some risks ahead and so the focus should be on the mission. With many reporters and other interested parties reaching out, I want… https://t.co/IyPVmHUAzo
— Jared Isaacman (@rookisaacman) November 4, 2025
He’s going to push as hard for reform as is politically possible.
[November 17th update]
Jim Meigs has a good description of the state of play, including quotes from Yours Truly.
[Bumped]
Excellent news. One hopes he can now be confirmed expeditiously, but there will likely be forces in DC looking to drag that process out or even scupper it entirely.
Assuming confirmation, I would like to see his first few acts as NASA Admin be:
1. Making Artemis 2 an uncrewed test mission of the ECLSS and heat shield.
2. Executing a formal unfunded Space Act Agreement with SpaceX for a Starship-based SLS-Orion substitute for delivery at the same time as HLS Starship.
3. Announce that, per Polaris 3 plans, he will command the first crew to test this item in LEO.
4. Reassign the Artemis 2 crew to Artemis 3 and let them pick their own ride to cis-lunar space.
Note that, if the Starship-based SLS-Orion replacement is chosen, all four crew, including the Canuck, can walk on the Moon.
The Dems are feeling their oats after this election cycle. They are in no mood now to do the Trump administration any favors. That includes NASA Administrators. BTW is anyone at NASA getting paid these days?
The Dems continue to win in their Blue fastnesses because all of these are bleeding population with the sensible and productive being the ones who leave. That leaves a more and more left-crazy electorate increasingly inclined to vote for grifters and psychopaths as long as they have that ‘D’ after their names. At some point, all that will be left in places like NYC will be the homeless, criminals, welfare cases and government employees. Cannibalism will ensue.
Is anyone at NASA getting paid? Yes, some are. Is everyone at NASA getting paid? I don’t think so.
Soon they’ll re-release “The Warriors” from 1979 and kids in New York won’t realize it’s a 45-year-old movie.
‘Tomorrow the world will watch in horror as its greatest city destroys itself. The movement back to harmony will be unstoppable this time.’ – Ra’s al Ghul, twenty years ago
Or “Escape From New York”
Indeed. Where’s Snake Plissken when you really need him?
Maybe a double-bill with ‘The Wanderers’ from the same year.
But kids in NYC will certainly know both movies are period pieces. It’s been quite awhile since there were any white street gangs in NYC. And mixed-race gangs don’t ever seem to have been a thing.
The Curley effect writ large.
https://grokipedia.com/page/James_Michael_Curley
Pretty much.
And the usual election “irregularities” of course.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, if I recall, authorized the sending of federal election observers – liberals from the Northeast mainly – to several states to stop-punch election chicanery in the Deep South for an extended period. We now need to recruit a cadre of conservatives from the West to do the same thing in Blue states, and especially in Blue cities.
With the exception of retaking Virginia; I don’t think Dems did much more than win areas they already have major control (and embedded cheating, which includes Virginia). Confirmation is in the Senate, where Republicans are still poised to retain by at least 51 seats.
That said, I’m more worried about the Senators in Alabama, Texas and Florida still trying to protect their pork.
Yeah those were heavily Dem area that Trump did not win in 2024. BUT as usual the Dems treat this as a Blue Wave and unfortunately it has given them extra energy to resist voting for the clean CR. I’m concerned that the CR blame might now shift onto the Republicans. The SNAP and FAA impacts are starting to be felt.
Though the SNAP issue might go away since a judge ordered Trump to pay for SNAP. Trump may just do that and that eliminates pressure on the GOP.
And it turns out that the big wins of a few days ago had zero impact on the pressure the Dems were feeling.
Isaacman is capable of winning over Democrats and a lot of the prosciency party already like him.
He’s going to push as hard for reform as is politically possible.
Having read his full post; I agree with your statement, Rand. I think more reform is needed, but I think what Isaacman is offering goes along with “politically possible”. I’m also not surprised with his support of Duffy, because Isaacman has other ventures that need DoT approval.
Isaacman’s rhetorical restraint reflects a strategic thinker picking his fights and not simply clapping back by reflex at every attack.
We shall see what we shall see, but I’m fairly optimistic Isaacman can produce a slimmed-down NASA, stripped of its now-pervasive Not Invented Here syndrome, that can collaborate with private industry to do good science and stay entirely out of areas where private industry now, or soon will, dominate – space launch being foremost among those.
Dick,
How to you think about how Issacman’s goals for NASA align with your more specific ones?
I support Isaacman’s proposal to put most of NASA’s aeronautics activity at one site. He’s been a bit cagey about what this might mean in terms of closing centers, but I think it’s fairly clear that Langley would be on the chopping block – as it should be.
I also support his notions about flattening the NASA bureaucracy. IMHO, any job title that includes both of the words “deputy” and “assistant” should be stricken from the NASA table of organization.
Expanding NASA efforts beyond the token-ish in terms of lunar and Mars settlement infrastructure development – especially power systems – would be a solid plus.
Isaacman’s preference for nuclear-electric propulsion development – as opposed to nuclear-thermal – is also defensible – especially for use with unmanned outer Solar System probes. I’m less sanguine it would find much use for moving people around in space, but I’m willing to support repurposing Gateway elements as part of some Nautilus X-type thingy as a development experiment, though my support for such falls well short of wild enthusiasm. And such support is contingent upon ending the idea of anything Gateway-ish in lunar orbit, particularly NRHO.
NASA has some role to play in the Commercial LEO transition, but that role is not to be in charge in any substantive way as is the case now with ISS. The idea of cutting NASA’s financial involvement in manned LEO activity to perhaps one billion dollars per year, instead of the current three billion, seems about right. But NASA cannot reasonably continue to exercise just as much control as at present when its contribution is cut by 2/3. Isaacman seems well-suited to supervise this transition – especially keeping the old ISS hands from overstepping.
The idea of tapping universities as substantial funding sources for a new, expanded, but less expensive program of unmanned probe endeavors is a very good one. But one should also acknowledge that doing such a thing will diminish the role of JPL, APL and Goddard in unmanned space probes. If universities are footing much of the bill, they will want the principal investigators to be their own people and not NASA staffers.
I’m a good bit more dubious of Isaacman’s apparent calls for eventual spacecraft certification by NASA. Advances in space launch technology, manned and otherwise, has been the exclusive province of the private sector for more than two decades. NASA’s lack-of-talent situation anent certification is not, perhaps, quite so severe as that of the FAA anent aircraft, but we should acknowledge that all of the best knowledge of manned spacecraft construction and operation now resides in the private sector and will continue to do so going forward.
Another dubious proposition is the “Starfleet Academy” idea. In future, most people who go into space will be employees of private sector organizations. NASA may have a handful of astronauts doing research on commercial LEO stations and at the notional Moon Base Alpha or on Mars, but the vast majority of the people in both places will likely have SpaceX, Blue Origin or other space company patches on their coveralls, not NASA ones. Any “Starfleet Academy” designed to feed such demand would be better ginned up as a private sector effort. The aeronautical model, I suppose, would be Embry-Riddle University.