AND a tech billionaire who bought a series of space flights from Elon Musk SpaceX and spent it the first private spacewalk appointed by President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday to lead NASA.
Jared Isaacman The 41-year-old CEO and founder of a card processing company has been a close associate of Musk since buying his first charter flight with SpaceX. He took the competition winners with him on that 2021 trip and followed it up in September with a mission in which he briefly opened the hatch to test SpaceX’s new spacewalking suits.
If confirmed, Isaacman will replace Bill Nelson, 82, a former Democratic senator from Florida who was nominated by President Joe Biden. Nelson flew the space shuttle Columbia in 1986 – on the flight just before the Challenger disaster – while he was a congressman.
Isaacman said he was honored to be nominated and would be “grateful to serve.” “Having been fortunate enough to see our incredible planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history,” he said via X.
During Nelson’s tenure, NASA accelerated its effort to return astronauts to the Moon. This next-generation Apollo program — named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister Artemis — plans to send four astronauts around the moon next year. It will be followed by the first landing on the moon after more than half a century.
NASA is counting on SpaceX to take astronauts to the lunar surface via Starship, a mega rocket that launches from Texas on test flights.
The space agency already relies on SpaceX to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station along with supplies. Boeing launched its first crew for NASA in June, but the Starliner capsule ran into so many problems that two test pilots ended up stranded on the space station. It will fly home with SpaceX in February, after more than eight months in orbit. Their mission was supposed to last eight days.
Also currently on NASA’s agenda: exploring the solar system. Robotic missions to the moon and beyond continue with NASA’s spacecraft on its way to Jupiter’s water moon Europa and the Mars rover Perseverance collecting more rock and soil samples.
Faced with a tight budget, NASA is looking for a faster and cheaper way to bring these Martian samples to Earth than the original plan, which swelled to $11 billion, with nothing arriving before 2040. As with human spaceflight, NASA has turned to industry for ideas and help to others.
Musk congratulated Isaacman via X, describing him as a man of “high ability and integrity.”
Fighter pilot Isaacman, who goes by the name Rookie, has described himself as a “space geek” since kindergarten. He dropped out of high school at 16, got his GED certificate and started a business in his parents’ basement that became the genesis for Shift4. His business is located in eastern Pennsylvania, where he lives with his wife and their two young daughters.
He set a speed record by flying around the world in 2009 while raising money for the Make-A-Wish program, and later founded Draken International, the world’s largest private fleet of fighter jets.
Isaacman has booked two more flights with SpaceX, including a trip that takes the first Starship crew into Earth orbit.
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