Pulled

Shortly after Donald Trump withdrew his nomination for Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, the billionaire private astronaut revealed what he would have changed at the agency had he been given the role of administrator. The most notable change would have been to NASA’s Artemis program, which is struggling with cost overruns and a super expensive, disposable rocket.

During an interview with the All-in Podcast on Wednesday, Isaacman spoke about his nomination for the role of NASA administrator and where his priorities would have lied at the agency. “Let’s complete our lunar obligations, because that’s a whole other story with China,” Isaacman said. “At the same time, in parallel, develop the capabilities to get to Mars.” If Isaacman had taken the helm at NASA, however, he would’ve focused on reusable hardware to reach the Moon.

NASA’s Artemis program has come under heavy criticism for its use of the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS), an expendable super-heavy-lift rocket designed to launch the Orion capsule towards the Moon. The 5.75-million-pound rocket was built using components from NASA’s Space Shuttle program, which ran from 1981 to 2011.

“It’s a giant disposable rocket program that repurposes shuttle hardware,” Isaacman said during the interview. “It’s expensive, it’s disposable. It is not the way to do affordable, repeatable, efficient exploration, whether it’s to [the] Moon, Mars, or anywhere else.”

So far, NASA has poured billions into SLS before admitting that it’s ultimately unaffordable. SLS has already gone $6 billion over budget, with the projected cost of each SLS rocket being $144 million more than anticipated. That would increase the overall cost of a single Artemis launch to at least $4.2 billion, according to a report released in May by the office of NASA’s inspector general.

Instead of relying on SLS, Isaacman suggests focusing on reusable launch vehicles for Artemis 3 onwards. “There’s enough hardware now to fly a couple of missions and make sure you beat China back to the Moon,” Isaacman said. “But you can’t be stuck on this forever. This is literally the equivalency, by the way, of taking P-51 Mustangs [a fighter aircraft] from World War II and using them in Desert Storm, because we got to keep the plants open.
And that obviously makes no logical sense whatsoever.”

He went on to criticize other aspects of NASA’s Artemis program. “We signed up a lot of international partners to support it because we like collecting flags, and it doesn’t necessarily always mean that what they’re contributing to is in the best interests of the program,”  Isaacman said. “This is going down a rabbit hole of a lot of things because of the shortcomings of the vehicle.”

This week, President Trump withdrew his nomination of Isaacman to lead NASA. The move was disappointing for the space community, which largely viewed Isaacman’s prospective role as a welcomed change for the agency as it struggles with budgetary constraints and bureaucratic red tape.

Trump’s decision coincided with SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk’s supposed departure from the government, which Isaacman suggests was the reason behind the president’s sudden change of heart. “I’m not going to play dumb on this – I don’t think timing was much of a coincidence,” Isaacman said. “Obviously, there was more than one departure that was covered on that day. There were some people who had some axes to grind, and I was a good, visible target.”

With Isaacman gone, NASA’s future is filled with uncertainty, particularly in relation to its Artemis program. The administration’s proposed budget for NASA suggests phasing out its SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, and replacing them with commercial alternatives. There is a lot of emphasis on returning astronauts to the Moon, but no clear way on how to do it.

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