Not a typical space story

Not a typical space-story, but one that I find heartwarming. It's centered on Space Camp, that summer camp for kids that's near the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and one of the people the story is focused on is one who went there as a kid. That kid is now NASA Administrator, Jared "Rook" Isaacman. 

The article's focus is that Space Camp officials report registrations have doubled this summer since the successful completion of Artemis II's lunar flyby mission in April.

When he was 12 years old, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman attended the week long “Aviation Challenge” program at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama.

“For the first time, I got behind the controls of an airplane when I attended Aviation Challenge,” Isaacman said on Friday evening during an event at the US Space & Rocket Center. “I became a pilot because I thought that was the closest I would ever get to the stars.”

Decades later, after founding a successful online payments company and flying to space twice as a private citizen aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, Isaacman has returned to Space Camp in Alabama on multiple occasions to meet with participants and share a bit of the awe he experienced as a kid. In 2022, a year after the first of these flights, Inspiration4, Isaacman donated $10 million to kick off a Space Camp expansion.

Donating $10 million to Space Camp is a positive thing if I'm keeping score, even for a borderline billionaire. (As a side note, is there a word for someone whose net worth is over one billion, but not as much as two billion?) It's more than just that, though. He donates his NASA salary to Space Camp, and on Friday, he returned to open the new “Inspiration4 Skills Training Complex.” That's a 50,000-square-foot facility completed with an additional $15 million donation from Isaacman - which will also support development of a new dormitory.

If the Apollo era was representative of how people relate to seeing others on the moon doing interesting things, Space Camp could well be on the way to a continuous period of more activity with many more teens and young adults interested in going. 

Final words to Rook Isaacman:

“Off the success of Artemis II, America’s return to the Moon is just getting going,” Isaacman said during the ribbon-cutting event for the new facility.

“And it is that kind of magic that inspires the next generation to attend Space Camp, get hands-on experiences at this national treasure, unlike anywhere else in the country, and grow up ready to pick up the baton and join in this great adventure.” 

Crewmates on Inspiration4, commercial astronaut Chris Sembroski and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Inspiration4 Skills Training Complex in Huntsville, Ala. Credit: Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images