This was unexpected. I saw him at the beginning of the month in Orlando at the NSS Space Settlement Summit. I quoted and referenced him in my Reason Foundation study, for his work in showing that multiple launches were actually lower mission risk than a single one. Lori Guisewhite (who I also saw there) remembers him as well.
RIP and Ad Astra.
The new version of the Starship booster had an issue on the pad.
Hopefully, they’ll figure it out quickly, and it won’t be too big a setback.
I don’t understand why this wouldn’t be in NASA’s charter. You can say they haven’t been doing a very good job of it, but the response to that should be to fix that, not create another agency.
…and the right to repair.
It’s a complicated issue. I wonder how much this issue is going to bleed over into space hardware?
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]
What could it look like?
We now have two American launch companies that are recovering boosters (well, three, if we count Rocketlab).
[Update a while later]
Thoughts from Bob Zimmerman.
I was digging through the archives looking for my first Veteran’s Day post in 2001, and I ran across this fisking of an op-ed on space policy from The Economist. It holds up pretty well, I think. I wish that they had followed my advice then. We’d be a lot further ahead.
I’m not sure — he’s sometimes subtle — but one gets the impression that he doesn’t like it.
It will be quite amusing if Duffy has goaded him into beating SLS/Orion to the Moon.
I’m glad that he’s realized it was politically stupid to say that the Moon “is a distraction.”
[Update a while later]
HLS interior. A true spaceship. But here's my mindblowing take. This is by far the worst Starship interior we will ever see. I think this is a very bare bones cladding that will be blown out of the water by their LETS lander, and standard crew variant.
— Ken Kirtland IV (@KenKirtland17) October 30, 2025
🧵 pic.twitter.com/JEf9xGw03m