I don’t have time to comment, but it looks like Jared is winning over the Senate.
Agree this is a significant & extremely positive development. Looks like the combo of @NASAAdmin's credibility, willingness to go public with existing program's shortcomings & crafting a plan giving SLS a chance to improve, while allowing competition worked! Promising indeed! https://t.co/xm9ecQaO8e
— Lori Garver (@Lori_Garver) March 4, 2026
An impressive job of political engineering by Isaacman. Better, I think, than anything Bridenstine managed on his watch and he was no slouch.
Anent Bridenstine, one has to give him credit for zealous representation of his lobbying client, ULA. He’s right up there with Mob lawyers on that score. But the timing could hardly have been worse. Trying to get a bigger carve-out of the NASA launch budget for his client would likely have fared at least modestly better had his client not just screwed the pooch again in a fashion that will ground its newest rocket for an indefinite period. No point trying to mandate that launches be handed to one’s client if one’s client lacks the ability to actually launch anything for who knows how long. No great surprise the Committee shot that trial balloon down.
Returning to Isaacman’s accomplishments here, one of the larger ones appears to be throwing a tarp over the entire Gateway project after having removed it from the Artemis critical path. Maybe it will be quietly buried now or maybe it will just be demoted to a low-priority project that can be pursued, asynchronously anent the rest of Artemis, at whatever pace NASA chooses. The lunar surface will now be the unambiguous Big Top and Gateway – if it survives at all – will be, at best, a sideshow.
I would be happy to see Gateway revived for the only purpose for which it would make sense: as a fuel depot. Absent that role, agreed: we’re better off without it.