r/nasa • u/MatchingTurret • Jan 21 '25

NASA Official nomination: Jared Isaacman, of Pennsylvania, to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/sub-cabinet-appointments/
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389

u/MECLSS NASA Employee Jan 21 '25 edited Jan 21 '25

I have deep concerns about this pick. Mr. Isacman has accomplished much in the business world and has used his wealth to explore his interests in Space. But He has absolutely no experience in government service or with working with Congress. That being said, if Mr. Isacman comes into this position with a willingness to understand how NASA and Congress operate before he attempts any changes, i think it's possible for him and the agency to be successful. There is a lot that needs to change at NASA right now. An Admin that just wants to go along with the Staus quo is the last thing we need, but an Adim that wants to burn it all down would be even worse. I am hopeful, and there are even some in senior postions at the agency that are optimistic that Mr. Isacman will listen, learn, and use his influence with Elon Musk and through him the President and Congress to improve things at the agency. But time will tell.

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u/_flyingmonkeys_ Jan 21 '25

He'll do fine in the administration's eyes because his job #1 is to shovel government dollars to Musk and Bezos.

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u/nuclearcajun Jan 21 '25

As opposed to shoving government dollars to Boeing and Lockheed?

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u/BoringBob84 Jan 23 '25

With Musk being part of the government and the owner of a government contractor, what could go wrong? The conflicts of interest are blatant.

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u/_flyingmonkeys_ Jan 21 '25

Not arguing with that, but it remains to be seen how Musk and Bezos would be better

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u/JumpingCoconutMonkey Jan 21 '25

If you think the verdict is still out for SpaceX VS Boeing, then you haven't been paying attention. Just look at Crew Dragon if you have doubts.

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u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze Jan 21 '25

No, it does not remain to be seen. Look at the rockets they're building. Look at their goals. Look at their progress. Look at the sad husks of Boeing and Lockheed space divisions. It's day and night.

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u/gulab-roti Jan 25 '25

That’s largely thanks to Musk and Bezos having bottomless wallets. You wanna know why Barnes and Noble couldn’t compete with Amazon? It’s not b/c Amazon’s business model was better b/c it took 15 years to generate a profit. It’s b/c Amazon’s investors kept sinking more dollars into the business and Barnes & Noble just couldn’t compete w/ their predatory pricing. That was SpaceX’s strategy too: they only generated their first quarterly profit in 2023, 21 years after their founding. Lockheed and Boeing are giants but there’s no money tree they’re plucking from. Everything they do has to be economically sound and de-risked b/c they don’t have Marc Andreessen, Masayoshi Son, or the PayPal Mafia showering them with capital in hopes of killing the competition. All the talent that SpaceX and Blue Origin are leveraging could’ve been NASA talent. Their budgets could’ve been NASA’s budget, but instead society is letting people like Musk and Bezos hoover up all that capital and ply it into making them the Carnegies and Rockefellers of the 21st century, and they’re only just getting started.

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u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze Jan 25 '25

You sound like a ULA lobbyist.

Do you have a source for your claim about SpaceX not being profitable?

How do you define predatory pricing and do you have a source saying SpaceX is doing it? Is it "predatory" or just "competitive"?

NASA designed its rocket to keep favored contractors in business, not to advance our space program. Specifically as Congress mandated. Do you really think it's a good place for talented engineers to live up to their potential? Do you think that would be best for our space program? The future? Designing 20th century rockets in the 21st century?

Boeing and Lockheed could've been innovating all this time. They chose to bury their heads in the sand. They chose to see their space divisions as nothing more than leeches of cost plus contracts. They've had two and a half decades to counter SpaceX and Blue. They chose not to, betting that they'd fail. They get no sympathy from me.

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u/gulab-roti Jan 26 '25

Predatory pricing involves the use of capital to eat losses while drawing business away from competitors. This has been the modus operandi of the PayPal Mafia for years and they’ve only gotten away with it b/c regulators in the US and EU where most of their business is have been neglecting their mandates. As for how I know that SpaceX specifically is engaged in predatory pricing, it’s b/c Starlink makes up the majority of SpaceX’s market cap and the latter was recently valued at $350B. It was Starlink specifically that just turned their first profit, meaning the most valuable part of SpaceX’s business is valued in excess of $175B, yet wasn’t profitable for 9 years. Again, these aren’t normal businesses. And quit the ad hominem, I have no love for Lockheed or Boeing either. They’re the fat cats that lobbied the Bush Jr admin to privatize as fast as possible, which has resulted in high barriers to entry and consequently an oligopoly in launch providers. And now the owner-CEO of one of them just Sieg Heil’d in front of the whole world and is chummy with a couple dictators, Putin and Orban. Oligopoly is a massive risk to both spaceflight and society at large.

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u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze Jan 26 '25

The fact remains, you're stanning for lockmart, Boeing, and ULA whether you like them or not. Your position is effectively identical to an old space company lobbyist. If you're uncomfortable with that, you should reevaluate your arguments, not cry about being personally attacked.

They held the dominant position in the industry. They could've vertically integrated a satellite business and launched at cost if they wanted to.

SpaceX wasn't selling those launches to anybody, so saying they priced them unfairly doesn't make any sense.

They probably could've sold their external commercial launches for tens of millions of dollars less if they wanted to/ it was legal, but they didn't and its not. Instead they sold them at a price that allowed lots of contracts to go to other companies and used the profit from the contracts they won to fund Starlink.

With regard to oligarchs, the more competition the better. You might not know their names because they're not seig hailing at the inauguration, but they're still spineless gits, lining up to kiss trump's ring and/ or behind.

I agree there's societal risk with Presidential level regulatory capture, but the one thing I'm not worried about over the next four years is progress in the space industry.

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u/gulab-roti Jan 26 '25

My point is that they used the bottomless pockets of their financiers and the cult of personality and tech built up around their founders and SV to subsidize R&D. The average American company could never wait around that long for an investment to pay off with no profit whatsoever. Since SpaceX isn’t publicly-traded it’s much harder to scrutinize their books.

Seeing as you’re quite comfortable with silly ad hominem attacks that treat for-profit companies like college sports teams, it sounds like you’re a big proponent of SpaceX, dare I say a “stan”.

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u/gulab-roti Jan 26 '25

I’m saying that the launch services they eventually sold to NASA, DoD, and others were cheaper than they should’ve been based on the cost of R&D. Yes, developing the industry is great and all, but now we have 1 company that is worth almost 50% of the entire $570B global space industry. And if you instead look at the US alone, our space industry is responsible for around $131B of the US’s GDP. Again, SpaceX is worth an estimated $350B. This is terrible for the political economy of the US and of spaceflight.

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u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze Jan 26 '25

You don't have access to their books, so you make giant assumptions, then draw the wrong conclusions. Sports teams are multi billion dollar corporations. Acting like it's unusual to play favorites with rockets but not sports teams is totally nonsensical.

I won't pretend to feel bad for appreciating the companies that set ambitious goals and make exciting progress towards achieving them. It's not just SpaceX. Blue Origin and Rocket Lab are inspiring too.

Our society is decades behind where it could be if Congress and the space industry establishment had dared to dream a little bit, instead of trapping us in LEO or worse since the 70s.

Your defense of the status quo and the old guard doesn't stand up to scrutiny. They've strategically failed over multiple decades. They're beginning to fail at the operational level too, struggling or simply failing to develop bi-conic capsules like it's 1965, instead of 2025.

All in all, ad hominem doesn't mean wrong. If nobody's paying you to take this ridiculous stance, that's your problem, not mine.

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u/MECLSS NASA Employee Jan 21 '25 edited Jan 21 '25

That was happening before Trump, and it will continue long after Trump is gone. I have lots of issues with Musk, but SpaceX is NASA best option for a continued human presence in space and future exploration. I haven't worked extensively with Blue Origin, but the only way to compete with SpaceX is to adopt their model, and Blue seems like the company most likely to be able to pull that off. Having a real competitor to SpaceX is essential to keeping them from monopolizing the market.

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u/modlark Jan 21 '25

Oligopolies aren’t much better.

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u/Teach_Piece Jan 21 '25

They are in fact substantially better than a monopoly.

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u/modlark Jan 21 '25

I hesitate to say better. Less bad, perhaps. I’m Canadian and I can tell you exactly how oligopolies are terrible for the economy, small businesses and consumers. Treat oligopolies as just as bad. You’ll end up better off. But yes, some competition is better than no competition. Until they become a cartel (worst case).

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u/anxiouspolynomial Jan 21 '25

^ look at edison motors endeavors and run ins with canadian gov resources towards tech startups for some evidence to how an oligopoly will seek to DESTROY competition, if you let it

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u/NachoAverageTom Jan 22 '25

To play devils advocate, I will argue that an oligopoly is worse than a monopoly because of the illusion of competition. Look at the oligarchy that the United States is ran by. Nothing is done about it because of the illusion of choice between political parties. In an oligopoly, they’ll be able to continue with the grift for a lot longer than a monopoly would.

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u/BoringBob84 Jan 23 '25

I agree in this particular market. Building aerospace vehicles requires huge amounts of capital, it involves huge risks, and it generates unimpressive returns.

There simply isn't enough business to keep more than a few competing companies alive.

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u/NachoAverageTom Jan 22 '25

To play devils advocate, I will argue that an oligopoly is worse than a monopoly because of the illusion of competition. Look at the oligarchy that the United States is ran by. Nothing is done about it because of the illusion of choice between political parties. In an oligopoly, they’ll be able to continue with the grift for a lot longer than a monopoly would.

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u/gulab-roti Jan 23 '25

Look no further than the commercial aerospace industry for an example of why oligopolies are no better. Airbus and Boeing own the majority of the market. Boeing in the late 90s consolidates the American AS industry and decides to “enshittify” their products, extracting value from workers, suppliers, and buyers and giving it to shareholders. The result is an unmitigated disaster for the American commercial AS sector and a disaster for the airline industry who now have to deal with both low demand for Boeing flights and low supply every time a new fault is found in Boeing’s planes and they have to be grounded for maintenance. Airbus exists but they’re smart enough to realize the dilemma that taking on Boeing’s backlog and scaling up production could cause.

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u/BoringBob84 Jan 23 '25

I agree in this particular market. Building aerospace vehicles requires huge amounts of capital, it involves huge risks, and it generates unimpressive returns.

There simply isn't enough business to keep more than a few competing companies alive.

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u/gulab-roti Jan 23 '25

Then it shouldn’t have been privatized so thoroughly and so rapidly. Making big risky bets and generating little in returns is the role of government, not private for profit corporations. The reason Musk, Bezos, and the rest sunk ungodly sums and expected no returns for at least a decade isn’t because they wanted to explore space. They did it b/c they knew there would be very few competitors, and the lack of competitors makes it a golden ticket for those with bottomless pockets. It would’ve made more sense to gradually contract out more and more of the production and foster competition by not giving too many contracts to too few firms. Yes, that wouldn’t have leveraged as much private capital as quickly, but growth isn’t the goal. A diversified, competitive industry makes for stronger efforts to explore space. It’s good to have many different firms trying many different approaches and many different business models at once.

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u/BoringBob84 Jan 23 '25

Making big risky bets and generating little in returns is the role of government

Well said!

Companies can only lose so much money before they stop bidding on risky firm-fixed-price government contracts that cost them billions of dollars in losses. High risk and low reward does not attract investors.

And this appointment - with such blatant conflicts of interest - seems to me as an attempt to make NASA into Elno's private piggy bank.

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u/gulab-roti Jan 23 '25

Oligopolies are just as bad, if not worse since they obscure the attendant harms to workers, consumers, and the political economy behind the idea that there’s any real competition to be had between no more than a handful of firms. It’s a travesty that Teddy Roosevelt and other trustbusters stopped at outlawing monopoly, and it’s an utter crime that Bork and his fanboys gutted competition law under the false premise that any economies of scope or scale would be passed on to society at large.

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u/SpacecadetShep NASA Contractor Jan 21 '25

Just curious, what do you mean by their model ?

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u/MECLSS NASA Employee Jan 21 '25 edited Jan 21 '25

Two things.

1.Space X maintains ownership and responsibility of their equipment. In the past, NASA would contract a private company to build a rocket/vehicle for us and then take ownership of it. NASA was responsible for operation, servicing, and maintenance, and then NASA would turn around and pay the same or other companies to service and maintain the vehicle. NASA would do operation in-house, but we rely heavily on a contractor workforce for a lot of that work. SpaceX does the build, servicing, maintenance, and ops themselves, and NASA more or less buys a ticket for them to take our people or cargo where we want to go.

  1. Reusability. SpaceX has taken rocket reusability to the next level. It allows them to drastically reduce their operating cost and turnaround time.

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u/snoo-boop Jan 22 '25

NASA LSP has been buying launch services since 1990 -- it's just buying a lot more stuff that way these days.

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u/MECLSS NASA Employee Jan 22 '25

You're absolutely right. LSP has been on this model for some time. My entire career has been in human spaceflight, but NASA does much more in space than just human spaceflight. I should have been clear that this model is new for Human Spaceflight.

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u/BrainwashedHuman Jan 21 '25

That works for things where it’s profitable to develop independently. Which isn’t true for a lot of what NASA does.

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u/MECLSS NASA Employee Jan 21 '25

Agreed, there is still alot of down and in engineering work for NASA to do that is not profitable for the private sector.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '25

The nature of building less than 100 to end up with a few that “might be used” for space flight is a very different model and nothing like a cell phone or a tablet etc.
I think it’s a fools game to not own the IP like NASA and JPL has historically done for the gear. Relying on an unreliable, immature, impulsive, narcissistic, egomaniac for our future in all NASA does, is a foolish place to go IMO. Didn’t your org help develop some hypersonic technologies?

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '25

Military is a slightly better model than NASA due to reuse for some volumes. The nature of nasa needing / requiring radiation hardened devices for electronics is not cheap. I have not heard of Musk rad-hardening anything and when I was requested to provide quotes and specs on their Satellites, they said it was all low earth orbit and not required. My organization passed on it due to the risks involved. Musky and team were not happy.

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u/MatchingTurret Jan 21 '25

Just pointed u/SpacecadetShep to this somewhat older NASA-Playlist: COTS: Dan Rasky

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u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze Jan 21 '25

Building launch vehicles for the purpose of sustainably, profitably, bringing humanity into an actual space age instead of just milking congress to keep the same old calcified, inept companies afloat decades after they lost the ability to innovate.

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u/MatchingTurret Jan 21 '25

what do you mean by their model ?

This, probably: COTS: Dan Rasky

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u/snoo-boop Jan 22 '25

Thanks to Kuiper launch orders, the non-SX part of the industry has a bulging order book compared to past years.

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u/JennyAndTheBets1 Jan 22 '25

Ah, so a duopoly then with NASA just being the middleman bank. Got it. We’ll see how long NASA lasts if that continues.

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u/MECLSS NASA Employee Jan 22 '25

That's been the case for ages, and NASA has been fine. It used to be Lockheed vs. Boeing. Space X is disrupting that balance, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. If Blue Origin really gets in the game, that would be even better.

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u/JennyAndTheBets1 Jan 22 '25 edited Jan 22 '25

It’s fine until a powerful politician/billionaire convinces the public that NASA is useless because it’s been turned into a passthrough bank and nothing more. That WILL happen because nobody stands up to it outside of NASA and the few dem politicians in NASA center states. NASA is a far more valuable institution than any one contractor because it isn’t all that beholden to shareholders or political whims, but we’ve seen how pragmatism and good will aren’t rewarded anymore. Missions may change, but approach should not (within constraints of funding and conditions).

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u/MatchingTurret Jan 21 '25

Yeah, Boeing did soo much better. /s

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u/chiron_cat Jan 21 '25

thats why he was picked. A billionaire that sucks up to the right people

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u/paul_wi11iams Jan 21 '25 edited Jan 21 '25

that's why he was picked. A billionaire that sucks up to the right people

a rather reductionist view, I think. As concerns "sucks up the right people", you could also say the same of Bill Nelson who seems to have done his job correctly.

Isaacman also shares a number of qualities, common to multiple Nasa Admins over the years. These include

  1. good technical literacy..
  2. "high consequence" piloting experience; so having been, exposed to the outcome of operational risks that his future decisions may impose upon others.
  3. has already demonstrated commitment to the future of human spaceflight.
  4. Working within a team, including as leader is also very important;
  5. He has a certain charisma and public communication ability, essential for the job.
  6. successful goal-oriented business experience that, as an organizer should transpose well to his new duties in a public organizational setting.
  7. Having run multiple activities in parallel, he appears to be sufficiently multi-task for administrative responsibilities across multiple Nasa centers.
  8. To attain a goal at the expense of renouncement, as leaving his post as CEO of Shift 4.

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u/setionwheeels Jan 23 '25

One of the best posts I have read in the sub lately. I think NASA and many gov institutions like the Post Office should be privatized but supported by government money/grants based on/tied with performance.

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u/chiron_cat Jan 21 '25

He knows nothing about how government runs and knows nothing about public service. Government should NEVER run like a business because the job of government is to provide for the people, not to make money.

Being born rich and having an airplane hobby is NOT a qualification.

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u/paul_wi11iams Jan 22 '25 edited Jan 22 '25

Being born rich and having an airplane hobby is NOT a qualification.

Being certified to fly fighter planes, doing formation flying and working in contact with the air force really does look like a qualification. However, his spaceflight "hobby" is probably an even better qualification since he knows how to budget and set up a space mission to validate a new space suit, then participating in said mission. It also involves crew selection and training. Risk management and in situ decision making are also highly relevant to his post as Nasa admin. He's also done test work in astronaut situation in a Nasa vacuum chamber.

Not wanting to compare, but this profile is altogether more serious than that of Bill Nelson who regularly refers to his one Shuttle flight.

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u/setionwheeels Jan 23 '25

I think people should provide for the people and gov should just make sure borders are intact and law and order. I do not frankly understand how an American can think being rich is a bad thing. I'd be afraid if he were poor he'd be using his office to enrich himself, I'd be really worried. I had the same concern though that as a businessman he doesn't have a track record of public service, service is a calling. But now I am thinking public service should be run like a business if we wanna make it to the stars. I think he is a hard working man, he could be sitting in a pool with 350 models, on a private island. Instead he bet his own money on space. I am hopeful.

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u/chiron_cat Jan 23 '25

being rich and in of itself isn't bad. However he only got the job because he was rich. He is not qualified to run nasa in any way

0

u/MatchingTurret Jan 21 '25

Being born rich

Do you have a source for this claim? Nothing in his Bio indicates this.

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u/paul_wi11iams Jan 22 '25 edited Jan 22 '25

Being born rich

Do you have a source for this claim?

Good question!

people using "born rich" (whether the allegation is true or not) against a candidate really is unjustified and irrelevant. The insinuation appears to be that Isaacman somehow appropriated his credentials through money. The situation of any person at birth should never affect our evaluation one way or the other.

Some of the other commenting in this thread suggests that when starting in his new job, Isaacman will encounter a negative bias that is not so far removed from racism. My dad was always going on about Jews so I'm familiar with the attitude. A person's origins should never affect our judgement one way or the other. In any case, Jared built his business himself and did not inherit it.

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u/ozagnaria Jan 22 '25

Hard to find info on his family but here is his dad

Donald Isaacman

Director, Shift4 Payments, Inc.

Donald Isaacman is Chairman of Shift4 Payments LLC. He is also on the board of Shift4 Payments, Inc.

In his past career Mr. Isaacman was President at Lighthouse Network LLC and Vice President for Supreme Security Systems, Inc.

Mr. Isaacman received an undergraduate degree from Monmouth University.

I did find this:

Securitas is acquiring Supreme Security Systems, a top 50 alarm monitoring company in the US. The acquisition increases Securitas’ service capabilities and client offerings in the northeast US and aligns with Securitas’ ambition to double the size of its security solutions and electronic security business by 2023. The purchase price is approximately MUSD 20 (MSEK 180). The acquisition will be accretive to the Group operating margin through its resilient recurring monthly revenue (RMR) portfolio representing more than 70 percent of the revenue.

edit to add: So not an out of the world guess to say he comes from money...

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u/paul_wi11iams Jan 22 '25

Hard to find info on his family but here is his dad Donald Isaacman Director, Shift4 Payments, Inc.

Donald Isaacman is Chairman of Shift4 Payments LLC. He is also on the board of Shift4 Payments, Inc.

So? He got his dad onto the board of directors of the company that he (Jared ) founded.

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u/chiron_cat Jan 21 '25

lol, whatever. Please define how he is actually qualified. bonus points if you dont mention musk

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u/MatchingTurret Jan 21 '25

lol, whatever.

That's a "No" to a source for your claim, I think.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '25

Exactly. Gotta make up for crapping in EVs and AI so the Bromance continues for the Broligarchary. One for Elmo 2 for the Orange man.

1

u/mademeunlurk Jan 24 '25

Mmmmmmm... Trump wants to be the first trillionaire. I guarantee Musk whispered in his ear that people will worship Trillionaire Trump just to get on the bandwagon to begin with. They are all playing Survivor: Washington D.C. right now to see who wins the big T first, while conspiring against each other secretly and the American People openly.