Donald Trump added yet another billionaire to his administration on Wednesday with his announcement that Jared Isaacman will become the next NASA administrator.
“Jared will drive NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration, paving the way for groundbreaking achievements in Space science, technology, and exploration,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Isaacman made headlines in September after becoming the first private citizen to accomplish a spacewalk while in orbit around the Earth in a SpaceX chartered flight. This was Isaacman’s second chartered flight with Elon Musk’s privatized space exploration program; His first was a three-day orbit around the Earth, financed by Isaacman, which included three other private citizens and boasted no professional astronaut in its crew.
Not unlike Musk, Isaacman made his money setting up a payment processing company, named Shift4, when he was 16. The company went public in 2020, making Isaacman a billionaire. Aviation began as a hobby for him, and turned into a business after he founded Draken International, which has had hundreds of millions in dollars in defense contracts with the U.S. Air Force, providing pilot training. Draken also boasts one of the largest private fleets of fighter jets.
Isaacman sold his majority stake in Draken International to the Blackstone Group in 2019. In 2022, the Air Force announced it would not be renewing its $280 million "red air" adversary training services contract with the private defense firm saying its services were “inadequate” for training “high end.”
In 2021, the then 37-year-old Isaacman linked up with Musk and announced he was chartering a SpaceX flight for his first trip into orbit. “We want to work towards a Jetsons-like world,” Isaacman said in an interview at the time.
In a statement on Musk’s social media cesspool X, Isaacman wrote “I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history,” promising to work toward “usher[ing] in an era where humanity becomes a true spacefaring civilization.”
Like many of Trump’s picks, Isaacman has no specific science or government background. John Grunsfeld, a former NASA associate administrator and an astronaut, told The Washington Post that Isaacson is “an out-of-the-box candidate.”
“He doesn’t have government experience, he doesn’t have previous NASA experience, he doesn’t come from the NASA contractor or the science side,” Grunsfeld said. ”
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