Isaacman's nomination clears Senate committee

On the journey to being accepted as NASA's next administrator, Jared Isaacman passed the next big hurdle today, being confirmed by the Commerce committee, where he had his first appearance back on April 9th.  Far from unanimous, the vote was 19-9 with the "nay" votes coming from Democratic senators.  The next step is a full senate vote.  It could be within a couple of days, but probably more likely to be in weeks.  

However, some key Democrats voted in favor of Isaacman, including the ranking member of the committee, Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. Before the vote, Cantwell said she appreciated that a candidate like Isaacman, with his background in business and private spaceflight, could bring new ideas and energy to the space agency. 

As a Senator from Washington, one of the biggest employers in her state is Boeing, which "just happens" to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the SLS and Artemis programs.  Both Cantwell and Texas Senator Ted Cruz are big advocates of Artemis and both emphasized that their support for Isaacman was based on his public support for the Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon.

"A commitment to keeping on with the Moon mission is the key requirement we have to have in this position," Cantwell said. "While it's not clear to me where the Trump administration ultimately will end up on the NASA budget, and I have concerns about some of their proposed cuts today, Mr. Isaacman seems to be committed to the current plan. I think this is a very big competitive issue for the United States of America. That competitiveness is not just a goal; it's a reality that we may some day wake up and find ourselves falling behind."

While both Isaacman and Trump have talked about Mars and the Moon almost as equals, it seems that congress considers the Moon to be the higher priority simply because of the visible "space race 2.0" with China.  Isaacman's direct quote is: 

I believe pursuing both lunar and Martian objectives is not inherently cost-prohibitive nor expressly prohibited by existing federal statute should such efforts not detract from the near-term objective of returning to the Moon first.  There is meaningful hardware commonality across the existing Artemis Human Landing System (HLS) providers. For instance, both contractors are already required to validate reusable heavy-lift launch capabilities—technologies essential for transporting mass beyond low Earth orbit, whether toward the Moon or Mars. In fact, many of the technologies and capabilities NASA is already investing in—such as surface nuclear power systems, nuclear electric propulsion, and nuclear thermal propulsion—are highly relevant for Mars exploration, though they remain underfunded and subscale.

Jared Isaacman, who goes by the name "Rook" in practically every other reference to him on this blog, on his last private mission to orbit, Polaris Dawn in September '24. You can see his shirt is embroidered "Rook Isaacman" on his right in this picture - just right of his thumb. Credit: Polaris Program