Jared Isaacman, commercial astronaut and former nominee for NASA Administrator, highlights long development timelines and lack of crewed flights for NASA's Orion capsule.
Assertion Supported
Isaacman: NASA's SLS rocket costs $4.5B per launch and faces an expiration date
“This rocket built on 60 year old technology that's four and a half billion dollars of launch has an expiration date.”
Opinion
Isaacman: Mining Mars propellant for SpaceX's Starship return requires 'a hundred consecutive miracles'
“Even when a Starship gets to Mars, you're betting on, like, you know, a hundred consecutive miracles happening to top, to mine propellant there and bring it back.”
Opinion
Isaacman agrees his NASA nomination withdrawal was likely aimed at Elon Musk
“I mean, you know, people can draw their own conclusions, but I think the direction that people are going is or thinking on this seems, seems to check out to me.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Isaacman: I have only spoken to Elon Musk a couple dozen times
“I've only spoken to him you know, a couple dozen times, maybe over the years and almost entirely related to my commercial space missions, inspiration, Ford, and Polariston.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Isaacman: US military fighter jet superiority gap vs adversaries shrank annually post-2015
“When we were replicating enemy tactics in 2015 in fighter jets, the gap between our capabilities and the bad guys was wide, and you felt very confident, and every year it started to shrink.”
What-if
Isaacman would have eliminated NASA's management layers, deputies, and review boards
“I would have deleted all that. Like not that people don't need to go, but they need to, you know, the amount of deputies, assistants, associate assistant to the deputy. The amount of committees, the meetings with 200 people on them. The review boards, like all…”