Isaacman’s space experiences have been groundbreaking, combining civilian leadership with cutting-edge space exploration and technology testing. He is the perfect choice to head the agency.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
Legal Insurrection readers may recall September’s “Polaris Dawn” historic space mission.
This mission included several history-making moments. The Polaris Dawn’s private crew of astronauts performed the world’s first commercial spacewalk during the third day of a five-day trip to Earth orbit. The team also crew tested an advanced extravehicular spacesuit, potentially a prototype for future interplanetary travel.
This mission was headed and financed by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who performed the space walk.
President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Isaacman to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Mr. Isaacman, the chief executive of the payment processing company Shift4 Payments, is a close associate of Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, and, if confirmed to the post by the Senate, would bring the perspective of an outsider to the space agency and its $25 billion budget.
“Jared will drive NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration, paving the way for groundbreaking achievements in Space science, technology, and exploration,” Mr. Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
One of the key issues for the next NASA administrator is how to get NASA’s centerpiece Artemis program back on track to send NASA astronauts to the moon. The first landing of astronauts is to occur during the Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for late 2026. However, key components needed to accomplish that, including the lunar lander being developed by SpaceX, appear to be behind schedule.
Space exploration enthusiasts are excited about the choice.
https://twitter.com/shubhamsatavx/status/1864359854661423509
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NASA has been acting more like a jobs program than a space agency.
Since post-Apollo.
I think since when Nixon realized the credit for Apollo’s success was placed on Kennedy more than himself. I think Nixon was that petty.
Cancelling Apollo? Probably so, plus an easy way to claw back some money. But I was thinking of how NASA reacted to losing their glory program, thrashing around for something to keep them in the public’s eye, keep the money flowing.
The Space Shuttle was terrible. It cost more per launch than the expendables it was supposed to replace, it killed more astronauts than Apollo, and it had so few uses that they ginned up the International Space Station, spreading the cooperation with the USSR on thick, while having so little use for the ISS that for a while, their official plan was to de-orbit it once built because it had no users.
I remember some hanky panky with Skylab too, or the Air Force’s MOL, or were they the same program? My memory is that NASA refused to boost it to a higher altitude and keep it from burning up because they didn’t want an cheap-ass space station showing up their ISS. But my memory of that is pretty hazy, other than thinking NASA was throwing petty little temper tantrum over it.
NASA may have been on a relatively minor trajectory when it comes to manned missions ever since their budget got hacked to pieces in the early 1970s – through no fault of their own – but they have had fantastic success with their interplanetary unmanned missions for the last 40 some years, acquiring astounding amounts of data and understanding about our solar system (missions to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and out beyond even the outermost planets) and indeed the entire universe (Hubbell and James Webb telescopes). Don’t disparage those achievements just because you don’t like NASA’s contributions to climate hysteria.
NASA is extremely good at science missions. They are not equipped to run a space train business, which is where private enterprise comes in, like SpaceX.
Why so generic? There is something for show. With pictures!
https://web.archive.org/web/20160215020246/www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/2/11/celebrating-women-in-science
https://web.archive.org/web/20180923210629/mars.nasa.gov/resources/7705/women-in-science/
By the way, compare the pictures. Something to link whenever some clown uses vague “NASA data” in an appeal to authority. This right here is real published NASA data, easy to evaluate.
They aren’t equipped to do anything for less than a billion dollars.
Hubble Telescope: $11 billion
James Webb Telescope: $10 billion (so far)
Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn: $3.26 billion
Mars 2020 mission: $2.8 billion
Yeah, I’d say NASA is a jobs program. Watching SpaceX drastically reduce the cost of rocket launches, it’s easy to see that private companies could do these missions for a tenth the cost, or less.
Well, obviously. Harvard-ified academia is best understood as a massive patronage scheme, US government in general is little more than a massive patronage scheme, and everything in their power is incrementally degraded to extension of the same patronage scheme.
See also: early Soviet Union. Whether you read Averchenko with his “A Dozen Knives in the Back of the Revolution” or loyalists Ilf & Petrov, this part of the picture is exactly the same: very official departments of nothing substantial that are very busy doing nothing but feed their existing employees and expand.
I wonder what all the “Climate Scientists” at NASA are thinking? 🙂
‘thinking’ would be an excellent idea for them. But I guess starting now is a bit too late. Tough.
As the Apollo (moon landing) program wound down and ended in 1972, the NASA budget shrank by 75%. The planetary atmospheres group at NASA Goddard was told to switch to ‘earth studies’. In 1976 they copied the simplistic 1967 one dimensional radiative convective (1-D RC) model developed by Manabe and Wetherald and created global warming artifacts for 10 minor species including methane and nitrous oxide [Wang et al, 1976, Table 3]. Later, in 1981 they copied the ‘slab ocean’ algorithm developed by Manabe and Stouffer in 1979 and added it to their 1-D RC model. They ‘tuned’ this model using changes to the CO2 concentration, solar flux and volcanic aerosols to match a global mean temperature record. This established the foundation for the pseudoscience of radiative forcings, feedbacks and climate sensitivity still used in the climate models today [Hansen et al, 1981, Figure 5]. For further details see ‘A Nobel Prize for Climate Modeling Errors’, Clark 2024.
The first thing that the new Administrator should do is shut down all the climate modeling and related activities at NASA.
“The first thing that the new Administrator should do is shut down all the climate modeling and related activities at NASA.”
Agreed. This is important. I would even say that NASA (as an institution) must have known long ago from its aeronautical science and space launch and recovery missions, which required deep expertise in meteorology, that there was never any good reason to expect a climate crisis to result from incremental CO2 in the atmosphere.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/05/16/wuwt-contest-runner-up-professional-nasa-knew-better-nasa_knew/
NASA’s role in space-based earth observation should continue, but with no top-down agenda about “climate.”
An important step will be to redirect NASA GISS to do real research rather than fiddling climate model parameters to get trace amounts of CO2 to warm the surface.
Imagine the impact if GISS come out and apologise for all the non-science drivel they have borne over the last 40 years.
part of that task would be to salvage the original raw temperature data that ought to underpin the GISS instead of the models-compromised mush now.
The raw temperature data are available from the GISS website. They don’t collect it; they just process it through peer-reviewed methods.
So why don’t you go there, download it, and prove them wrong?
I would like them to put some serious effort into an Asteroid Diversion System.
GISS, and all other global surface temperature producers are currently reporting warmer than modelled temperatures.
Why would they do that, when their models, like all the others, have been bourn out?
There is a lot of drivel here, but it’s not from GISS.
Better yet get NASA out of the Climate business altogether. It is a distraction from its mission.
Once again:
Trump’s original plan was Space Force. That is, to build replacement for NASA around the fresh command chain imported from military. This could actually work. At least somewhat (Pentagon is quite corrupt too, obviously, but there’s something alive still squirming in the mycelium — see “Millennium Challenge”).
A “reform” and a new figurehead can only sink efforts and resources in the swamp.
So now we have the real answer! Trump is allowed to implement a half-measure. Thus, the US oligarchy opted for a drastic step of dragging him back to that office and let him do something not completely decorative… but they did not have guts to make him an actual CEO, he is hobbled by the backseat drivers.
Can he shut down the “Goddard Institute for Space Studies” unit in NYC (above Tom’s Restaurant of Seinfeld fame) which the home of climate propaganda not space studies. The real satellite temperature record is hosted at Huntsville Alabama where it is run by Roy Spencer and John Christy.
Per the above article, according to President-elect Trump:
“Mr. Isaacman, the chief executive of the payment processing company Shift4 Payments . . . would bring the perspective of an outsider to the space agency . . . Jared will drive NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration . . .”
Maybe . . . maybe not. The logic that a CEO of a payment processing company has the scientific and management experience needed to run NASA eludes me, but then again who knew that an actor named Ronald Reagan would turn out to be a great President!
I have no idea how motivational Mr. Issacman will be as the (presumed) future NASA Administrator.
BTW the above article does not mention that two days ago, on December 5, at a press conference NASA leadership said they were again delaying the next two Artemis missions to the moon, pushing the first crewed landing (Artemis 3) to the middle of 2027 (see https://spacenews.com/nasa-further-delays-next-artemis-missions/ ) . . . thereby outdating Trump’s statement of “The first landing of astronauts is to occur during the Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for late 2026” very shortly after it was issued.