Like the turning of the tide, or the changing of the seasons, every four (or eight) years NASA's top brass and top priorities get a vigorous shake-up with a new incoming presidential administration. President-elect Trump announced yesterday that he was tapping Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur and astronaut (and close associate of SpaceX's Elon Musk) to lead the nation's space agency.
The news has major ramifications for the space agency and its ambitious agenda, most especially regarding NASA's planned crewed return to the moon via its Artemis program. The current plan incorporates a host of over-budget, behind-schedule projects, like the giant Space Launch System rocket, the Orion crew spacecraft, and a moon-orbiting habitat called the Lunar Gateway. The plan also hinges, however, on using SpaceX's enormous in-development Starship vehicle to get some Artemis crews to and from the lunar surface.
Isaacman's extensive ties with Musk and SpaceX—as well as both men's penchant for pursuing paradigm-shifting positive disruption—have many commentators speculating that this changing-of-the-guard will lead to an Artemis overhaul, perhaps even a radical shift away from the program's non-SpaceX pillars to a streamlined Starship-centric approach. Meanwhile, much of Isaacman's intentions for the rest of NASA's sprawling portfolio of space science and exploration are as yet unclear.
In a civil space agency potentially retooled to embrace Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" ethos for winning a 21st-century moon race, will there still be room for Earth observations, climate studies, astrophysics and heliophysics research, aeronautics, and much else? Stay tuned to find out; more may well be revealed early next year when the U.S. Senate convenes to consider Isaacman's confirmation. --Lee Billings
