Jared Isaacman, commercial astronaut and President Trump's nominee for NASA Administrator, discusses the high costs and legacy nature of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket program.
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…”
Opinion
Isaacman: China possesses an immense second-mover advantage across all technology
“They have this immense second mover advantage that is that is crushing across all technology.”