Jared Isaacman: What went wrong at NASA | The All-In Interview
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Jared Isaacman was nominated by President Trump to become the 15th administrator of NASA in December. He passed out of the Senate committee in May and was set to be confirmed by the full Senate this week. However, on Friday, President Trump withdrew his nomination for Isaacman. We asked Jared to sit down with us for a conversation.

We dive into everything, his experiences as a successful entrepreneur, fighter jet pilot, commander of the world's first all-civilian space flight, and the first civilian to conduct a spacewalk, what he saw in his six months studying NASA, how American government bureaucracy has eroded its performance and puts the nation at risk in the great space race underway with China, and what really happened.

Was it a discovery about prior donations to Democratic candidates or an association with Elon Musk that lost him the nomination? Here's my conversation with Jared Isaacman. Jared, welcome.

I, like many space enthusiasts, was thrilled for your nomination to lead NASA as the 15th administrator of the agency. Founded in 1958, the year after the Russians put Sputnik into orbit, NASA's perhaps, in my opinion, the U.S. government's most pioneering agency, having organized and led our exploration missions to the moon, Mars, the outer solar system, and beyond.

as well as the launch of important scientific missions to observe the Earth, to observe our solar system and the deep universe, and of course, the installation and operation of the ISS. And you seemed really qualified for the job as a business manager, a successful entrepreneur, a flight and space enthusiast. So I'm really curious to hear your views on NASA, the space industry overall, the race with China, and frankly, hear a little bit about what the heck just happened.

With your nomination, a lot of people have a lot of questions that we'd love to hear your point of view on. So I thank you for joining me today, Jared. I'm thrilled to be here to chat. And as someone who's been a space enthusiast since kindergarten, whether it's through the lens of commercial space or, you know, the great space race from the 1960s or NASA of today, like these are all subjects I get pretty charged up about. So love to chat about it.

What inspired you to get into space? You went to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and you later became an entrepreneur, but were you always kind of obsessed with space and did you always dream of doing what you got to do last year, which was walk in space? Yeah, so this is all my parents' fault. They skimped out on a babysitter as a kid and just put me in front of the TV. So I was watching movies like Top Gun, The Right Stuff,

Space Camp, the movie, you know, 1980s movie where if you go to Space Camp, a robot's gonna launch you into space. This was all stuff in like my elementary school years. So, I mean, I told my kindergarten- I just showed it to my kids last week, by the way. So funny that you say that. I pulled up Space Camp. I had to buy it because it's not on any of the streaming services to show it to my kids. Yeah. Okay. I've been to Space Camp to like speak to the students a number of times. And I asked them like, all right, raise your hands if you've seen the movie Space Camp here and know who Jinx is.

And like no one raises their hand. And that just goes to show I'm old. So you were always into it. Is that what you wanted to do to work in aeronautical engineering or as a pilot? Or what were you thinking of doing? Yeah, I mean, so kind of interesting start to the story. I mean, I started my day job, which is shift for...

It's a pretty large fintech now when I was 16. And I was just like most, as you know, entrepreneurs, you're burning yourself out, waking up on the keyboard. And I said, I need a hobby in life. So I picked up my passion for flying. And I basically had parallel careers in aviation and in business. And I started flying air shows online.

in 2010 and 2011. And I was flying with a bunch of really talented ex-military, even current military pilots. And they were like, you know, you could fly in the, you know, in the Air National Guard or the reserves. And I found out, well, wow, that's amazing. You can fly fighter jets part-time and serve the country. You need a college degree. I never

I never had one because I started my business at 16. So that's actually why I went back to school, went to Emory Riddle, because it's an aviation school. I think he graduates more Air Force pilots every year than the Air Force Academy. But anyway, that's ultimately why I got my degree. But my pursuits kind of in parallel of business and aviation has existed, you know, really since I was a teenager.

So you're running this business. So Shift4, just for those who are listening, is a payment processing company that is a public company today, $8.5 billion market cap. So you've built an incredible business. And then on the side, my understanding is you've flown like 7,000 hours in fighter jets, and you've tried to beat the circumnavigation record a couple of times now. So were you kind of going to work and then on the weekends flying? I mean, how did you...

kind of balance running a company trying to do that today while balancing this podcast. I can tell you it's really hard to do that and anything else. It's like, how did you, how did you do that? Well, I mean, you know, I, again, I started my business at 16. I started flying a couple of years after that, you know, this is before you have a, you know, a family and other responsibilities. So like literally all I was doing was working and flying, mostly flying at night, which was great.

I did that around the world record flight. Didn't get it in 08, broke that record in 09. We did it to raise funds for Make-A-Wish Foundation, which was cool. And it was a great challenge. And then later on started flying air shows, which was great. And we did a lot to raise money for Make-A-Wish there. And then we kind of took the air show flying, which was just maximum fun.

super adrenaline and was like, we're doing loops and rolls to music, you know, 10 feet off the ground, 18 inches between our wings. We probably should pivot this to something that keeps the fun factor up, but has some commercial intent, also helps the country. So we started a defense company called Drakken. We wound up assembling the world's largest fleet of fighter jets, jets just like this behind me. And we were professional bad guys.

for the department of defense, the air force, like we would fly as aggressors, just like in top gun replicating Russian and Chinese Iranian tactics. I literally, I mean, I remember at Christmas parties in, you know, 2014, 2015, speaking to the, to the workforce. I was like, I hope you all know next to commercial space and what Elon's doing at SpaceX. This is the second coolest company. Like we get to be professional bad guys all the time. It was awesome. So I, again, I've had two awesome parallel careers, um,

But hey, running two companies like nothing compared to Elon, I think I can't even, he's got to be up to like a half a dozen CEO titles in parallel right now, not to mention trying to save the, you know, the country, you know, and get it back on a good fiscal footing. So it's my responsibilities are pale in comparison.

Well, so when did you first meet Elon? And how did you meet him? So it's interesting, and I almost like guarantee wouldn't remember it after. Well, first, I think like in early 2000. So I started my FinTech in 1999. I actually think we were on like the same, like old, it was like a TV show being interviewed in the early 2000s. And we that was probably the first handshake. It was after

We set the, we broke the, actually the, I'm sorry, we didn't break the record. This was in 2008, the around the world record. We came up short. Peter Dumanis, Dr. Dumanis reached out and asked if I wanted to go to Baikonur and see a Soyuz launch with some of the kind of early commercial space pioneers. I remember, you know, all the Google founders were on that TU-154, you know, Russian transport. I'm like, man, if this thing goes down, you're wiping out a lot of like, a lot of brain power here.

Because of Sergey Lari, Eric Schmidt was on it. And that was, it was coming back from that. I think there was a charity poker event or something at Elon's house in, it was early days of Tesla. So I think I met him again there. But really we, you know, like we don't know each other that well. 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, Inspiration4 and Polaristan.

Oh, so you're not like super close with him. Because I think there's this narrative that you and Elon have a secret, you know, deep connection, and he's one of your best friends. And, you know, that's kind of like how how your hearing went. When I look at some of the video clips of how some of the senators were treating you, they're like, Oh, you're, you're doing this all for Elon, he's your best friend. And

Yeah, you know, I think almost every one of the senators on both sides of the aisle made that assumption and asked a lot of questions on that. And I said, look, Elon is one of the most accomplished, if not the most accomplished entrepreneur in modern history. Every one of his companies sets out to solve some of the greatest engineering problems for all humankind.

even his super selfless service to the government of trying and getting us back on, again, like I said, sound fiscal footing. I admire a lot of what he does, but honestly, and I told the senators, my connection is I paid his company to go to space twice. And look, if there was more than just SpaceX out there offering the service...

and you had competition, I probably would have paid less. So if anything, I'm very pro-competition in this regard. And I don't consider myself beholden to Elon at all. I want to see all of commercial space succeed. I'm a huge space enthusiast. Let's go through that. So you met Elon. Did you get involved as an investor in SpaceX along the way? How did the Inspiration4 mission come to be? In 2020, I did hear that SpaceX was doing another one of its secondary rounds. And I was connected through

you know, I think it was Citi. And I wound up speaking to the CFO at, uh, at SpaceX. And he's like, no, look, the funding round is closed. And, um, you know, we're kind of pretty selective on, on who we let in. And I was like, okay, great. Well, Hey, you know, back in 2008,

I actually got the first offer to pilot the first Dragon spacecraft, which is wild to think about, like 2008. And even if I can't be an investor, you know, at some point or another, I'd love to have an opportunity. And he was like, well, can't be an investor now, but

We could talk about a human spaceflight mission. And I had no idea I was going to have an opportunity to be the first. I assumed there was a lot of people in front. And man, it was what a privilege to be able to do that, be part of mission design and select a crew of inspiring individuals and raise a

quarter of a billion dollars for St. Jude. And it was just a successful mission. It helped open the door for a lot of other commercial missions to come. So awesome experience. So in 2021, you commanded Inspiration4, which was the first all-civilian spaceflight using the SpaceX Crew Dragon. Yep. And that was just truly like a momentous

It was just so beautiful to watch. And I remember it was also like a tough year because it was a year after COVID. So it was so great to see that happening. But I had assumed, and I think a lot of people had assumed, that you were like a big investor in SpaceX or really tight. But it just happened within a one and a half year or year period that you kind of went from, hey, I'd love to put some money into SpaceX to, oh, I can participate and command the Inspiration 4 and get out there into space. Not a year and a half.

Days. Days. Like literally from that phone call in, you know, October, Inspiration4 was born a week or two later. We did a, like a ceremonial signing at the Crew-1 launch, which is wild too. And it speaks to the confidence of SpaceX that they were ready to sign up for the first commercial, like the first civilian mission to orbit before they even returned operational capability to

for human spaceflight to NASA. Now they did demo two, of course, with Bob and Doug, but crew one had not flown when SpaceX said, we're gonna get this done. And then 10 months later, we were in orbit.

And it was an incredible experience. And obviously we followed it up with a whole development program with Polaris and flew a second mission as well. Yeah. So just going back, you said you were given an offer to pilot a Crew Dragon in 08? Is that correct? When did that happen? How did that happen? So it was right after I came back from that around the world flight. And again, I said, you know, Dr. Diamantis reached out and we met in the city and he was like, you seem to be like

kind of thinking the way we think in terms of, you know, a more exciting future in transportation and aerospace. Now, of course, his interests cover everything from like human life extension to he likes to solve a lot of world problems too. Yeah. And it was through those connections and coming out to Baikonur that I did get that offer. I saw the agreement. It was funny. I showed it to some of the SpaceX folks when we were talking about Inspiration4, but...

Yeah, amazing. Yeah, just knocked on the door every now and then and got lucky in 2020. It was certainly through the approach of trying to be an investor, but it revisited old conversations and moved very quickly. Kind of funny that a banker called you from Citi and that led to you. Oh, I called the banker. You called the banker. I called the banker trying to get the contact, like a recent contact. And that's how it happened. You're like, hook me up. I want to get in. That's crazy. Yeah. Okay, so then you said, hey, that was a successful mission. Yeah.

You had obviously a good relationship with SpaceX and the operations team there, I'm assuming. And you said, hey, I'd like to come back. And like Polaris Dawn was formed at that time. Or did that come together later? Just for the audience. So last, was it September? You were the first private citizen in human history to perform a spacewalk, which again, another incredible moment.

And, you know, I think it was inspiring for people who realized at that moment that perhaps you didn't need to become an astronaut to be able to walk in space. I mean, it was really just incredible. But how did the continuation go from Inspiration4 to Polaristan? Yeah. And I'd love to, I mean, Polaristan was filled with, we crammed so many really incredible objectives in five days on top of about 40 science experiments. It was an awesome mission. I'd love to tell you about it.

And, you know, but yeah, so when we came back from Inspiration4,

I thought we checked the box on every objective. I mean, we navigated the whole, you know, billionaire in space thing, which at the time with, you know, some of the other, you know, missions that were going off was, was attracting a lot of, a lot of heat and really focused it on trying to do good in the world that, you know, we can make progress in space and try and, you know, make the, you know, mother earth a better place. And we focused on raising a lot of money for St. Jude and, um,

And anyway, like we did, and we did three days of science and research experiments. I felt really good. And we were a little bit short on our, uh, on our, um, you know, our fundraising goal for, uh, St. Jude. I mean, we, we set out to raise over $200 million. We wound up raising 250 million, but we were a little short when we came back and I was like, man, we almost got everything done. And then Elon sent a tweet right after splashdown 40 minutes after splashdown. And he said, put me in for 50 million. And he already had put in five.

And we exceeded our goal. And I was like, man, we got everything done. We set the bar high. Maybe this is it. And it was a couple weeks later that I was invited to go to Starbase. This was the second time I went. This was like October of 21. And we sat down with a number of folks, including Elon. And we talked about...

you know, doing a, like a developmental program where we actually can build things and test things that hadn't been done in a while. And I remember Elon, he's like, we can build a suit. I know exactly how I would do it. And let's go up really high. You know, let's get past the Gemini 11 record, go farther into space than anyone's gone since we last walked on the moon because it's,

It's different, it's hard, and we're going to learn a lot. And that's what you need to do when you want to inspire people is not kind of do the same things over and over again, but do things that are different and build up to an even grander objective. And I was like, all right, I'm totally in. And we contemplated other missions, you know, a follow-on to Polaris Dawn and then the first crewed flight of Starship. But the nomination came in and, you know, I had to put my...

my fun space career on hold for an incredible opportunity to serve the country and contribute to the world's greatest space agency. So let's get into that. How did the conversation lead to you becoming the nominee to administer NASA? Were you in conversations with Elon first? Is that how this kind of began for you? No. So

And I think like that's another thing that, you know, almost every senator wanted to ask is, you know, weren't you Elon's guy in this? Like, I have no doubt. I mean, look, he helped the president win the election. He was in Air Force One, Marine One. He was at Mar-a-Lago throughout the campaign. I'm sure he had inputs. I was getting text messages from generals.

that I, uh, that I got to know when I built, you know, helped build that defense company, Drakken, uh, that's where we flew all the fighter jets. And, and, you know, they were now positions of influence and said, would you like to serve in the, in the administration? And it, and it wasn't even just NASA. I mean, there were roles from treasury to, uh, the department, you know, to the air force. And I was like, I am honored to contribute anyway. You know, I've had, I've

I've been, you know, relatively apolitical, but if I've had one political position that I've been pounding the table on since I was exposed to the defense industry at Drakken, it's the competitiveness of the nation. And that's because I saw when we were replicating, you know, 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.

And it's like, what is going on here? Why are we paralyzed? Why are we slowing down while the Chinese especially are moving wicked fast?

And I've spoken out about it from time to time on where I think some of the problems are and over consolidation of the defense industry. So anyway, I was absolutely honored to have a chance to serve. I'm sure Elon contributed into the, you know, was supportive in it, but it wasn't a number of folks. And I got a call from Howard Lutnick, who's leading the transition team, and he did a phone interview. And the next thing you know, like 40 hours later, I was at Mar-a-Lago. He said, hop on a plane, come out here.

Having a lot of friends of mine who are serving in this administration, your story sounds familiar, that folks that are close to this whole group that was sitting at Mar-a-Lago for several weeks and months after the election,

I've heard a lot of similar stories that folks got called saying, hey, would you like to consider something? And it was very open ended. It's like, we've gotten to know you, we trust you, you're reliable. But most importantly, we're looking for folks that have experience and acumen in operating a business in understanding how to manage at scale, and really have a similar sort of belief system, I would say to the folks that that we're stepping into run this administration. So

I do think what you're saying sounds like what I've heard and makes a lot of sense to me. So you then fly out to Mar-a-Lago. What was that like?

Oh, man, that was so cool. I mean, it just happened so suddenly. And I mean, just, you know, kind of put together a quick plan. At that point, I knew it was consideration for NASA administrator. But I'll tell you, in the days leading up to it, I was hearing everything from being at the Treasury Department in various roles and to, you know, again, to the Department of the Air Force. But I knew it was NASA. And I was like, well, I gotta, I gotta come with a plan.

And, uh, and I, you know, put together a one pager for the president and it was a, it was a great interview. I mean, I never really met him in person. I shook his hand kind of once in passing, uh, 10 plus years earlier. And the president was incredibly knowledgeable. Um, I was impressed. He knew a lot about the space program, which makes sense. He, I mean, you know, he helped with commercial crew return operational capability to the U S with, with dragon, uh,

you know, a big push on the Artemis program, created the Space Force. He knew a lot. He knew a lot about China. We talked a lot about their Air Force, actually, which I thought was interesting. Some of my, you know, defense experience. And it was incredible. I mean, it was an hour plus long and I came away with it feeling, you know, really good about the opportunity. Who coached you on your one pager and what did it say? Nobody coached me on it. It was just, I generally, you know, I've had an opportunity to obviously interact with NASA over the last

I mean, my commercial space career now goes on, well, it'll be five years and a couple months from when it began. And, you know, during Polaris Dawn, when we were doing suit development, spent a lot of time at NASA using their chambers and facilities, had a lot of, you know, kind of firsthand experience, certainly Kennedy Space Center. So I had a good starting place. And I think it really just centered on, look, in this kind of environment, budgets aren't getting bigger. We do have to do more with less.

The agency is doing a lot of littles, a lot of things that other agencies, departments, companies are capable of doing. That's not why the taxpayers fund NASA. Like NASA is funded to do the near impossible that no one else can do.

Not things that, you know, companies should be doing for their own competitiveness. You know, NASA helps fund like engine efficiency programs for, you know, commercial jet engine providers. It's like, don't they need to do that themselves or else they lose to their competitors? Like, why are we funding this? So basically like an idea to kind of go in, stop a lot of the littles that are not needle movers, that are not why the agency exists and concentrate on the needle movers. So, yeah.

You know, that's leading in the high ground of space. Let's get let's you know, let's complete our lunar obligations because that's a whole nother story with with China. At the same time, parallel the the, you know, parallel the capabilities to get to Mars, help commercial industry develop the rapid reusable heavy lift capability that allows us to go anywhere. Pivot from competing with industry to doing what no company would ever do, which is build nuclear spaceships. There's a lot of advantages to it.

Nuclear electric propulsion, for sure. We don't have to worry as much about refilling. It's hyper-efficient transport of mass. It opens up beyond Mars. And frankly, look, it takes the pressure off in-situ resource manufacturing. And if you are going to do in-situ resource manufacturing, you're going to need nuclear power. And the farther we get away from the sun, the less reliant we are on solar. A lot of reasons why that should not be a small program in the lab right now doing light bulbs, which should be a billion-dollar initiative.

figuring out the space economy and increasing the rate of world-changing discovery. Those have been my priorities. It's what I told brief the president. It's what I went through the Senate and the hearing on. It's what we would have tried to concentrate on if I got the job. There's a lot in there we should unpack. I want to just get your perspective on the arc of NASA. NASA is a storied institution, inspirational to many. You and me the same. I still wear a NASA hat with pride often.

But, you know, the agency from an outsider's perspective feels like it's become a laggard. It feels like it's kind of lost a little bit of its luster. Why is that? Do I have that wrong? And if I don't, what has happened to the administration of the agency over the decades that's led to this moment?

Well, I, like you, I love NASA and I was so excited to contribute. I was honored that the president nominated me. I mean, you've got the best and brightest that show up to work every day and want to win in the high ground of space. And I would have been thrilled to work alongside him. You're totally right. Everything about it, even the, just looking at the insignia, how, how damn inspiring it is.

But NASA's got problems. And, but that's, that, look, that's not unique to them. It's going to be government-wide. Whatever I tell you that I think is wrong with NASA, I would guarantee it, you know, is like, you know, it's systemic across every government agency and department. The bureaucracy is super real. No one's going to be surprised about that. You know, the, you have dozens of layers of leadership. Everybody's got a deputy. I mean, you know, things that, you know, I know like

We know in business that certainly Elon knows and instills in his companies across commercial space, like ownership. You push ownership down to the lowest levels. You empower the smart people to make good decisions. You give them the tools to make those good decisions. You hold them accountable when you get them wrong. That does not exist inside NASA or the government. There is so many layers of management. Everybody's got a deputy. It's crazy. I would have deleted all that. Not that people don't need to go, but 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 that needs to go. You need so many more doers. And there's a lot of them there. They're really smart, but you got to push down, you know, ownership to the absolute lowest level. So you got this crushing bureaucracy that impedes progress. And then and here's where Congress plays a role.

Every state's got some equity that they care about and they protect like hell and it impedes the big progress. You know, like I tell you, I love talking to all the senators and the Senate was so fair to me and I know I would have had a lot of great votes.

But you talk to some senators and they're like, you know, we have a local rocket club that supports these schools and NASA contributes it to every year. And I want to make sure that continues. It's like, well, why can't you do a car wash for the rocket club? Like this isn't huge dollars. Why can't the community raise those funds? And then you might say, well,

What's wrong with a couple of rocket clubs, you know, to inspire the kids all across the country? Well, one turns to 10, turns to thousands, and it becomes a distraction. Those are parts to delete. Those are resources that are draining away from what every senator should care about, which is how do we get to the moon, get to Mars, and shock the world with, you know, with world-changing headlines. That's what people are waiting for from NASA, you know?

A hundred percent. I mean, man, what you're saying resonates with me so much. It's not just NASA. It's across the federal government. I've spent enough time now interacting with folks and meeting with folks and hearing similar stories. It's just the chaos that builds with scale, with age, with bureaucracy, with competing interests that all have to be met.

And you end up diluting everything away. It's so frustrating to hear that. I think this does play into why China is really just moving at lightning speed right now. They have this immense second mover advantage that is crushing across all technology. You know, when you had the Manhattan Project, we had the technical know-how, the will and the resources to get something done. And we set up facilities where we needed them.

Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore. You put the facilities where you need them and the talent where you need them to execute on the mission and everything builds up logically to it and you deliver a win. We did the same thing with the space program in the 1960s. Well, now all of those national labs and really, honestly, a lot of the facilities within NASA are doing lots of little things for existence.

And some of them are relevant to the mission and some are not. And when you try and do something, you know,

you know, glorious now, you have to try and repurpose those resources that are super entrenched and they don't want to necessarily move. And then of course you have Congress that's protecting their programs. China is literally doing what we are doing, what we did, you know, in the, in the forties and sixties and saying, we're going to, Hey, we're going to go after fusion. Um, or we're going to work on new next generation, fifth gen nuclear reactors. We're gonna build six gen fighter jets and they put the facilities where they belong with the right people and resources. There's no baggage.

And they have this incredible second mover advantage. And they're able to get things done at lightning speeds, because they don't have all that drag. And we have a lot of drag. And again, it's not just NASA, it's it's government wide. And do you think there's a way to fix it without Congress or is the only way to fix it without Congress? Meaning, meaning there needs to be no Congress, if we have a shot at fixing this, and there needs to be a different governing model.

You know, look, I think the I think this is this is why I absolutely support the president. You know, despite all I mean, my single largest political donation ever was to was to President Trump in this, you know, to support his inauguration. It's why I got charged up with, you know, with Elon assembling the Doge team is like we do have to shrink the government. We do have to get rid of all these inefficiencies, the waste and the distractions from the mission.

things that we don't need every taxpayer contributing to and actually concentrate those dollars, real dollars on the things that the taxpayers should be fighting for. And when you do that, you know what, like 20 billion or 25 billion is actually a lot of money. And, you know, and I know like it's a super tough budget environment right now and people hate change, but I'm always surprised when like a million is not a million anymore and a billion is not a billion because you do an awful, awful lot with that. So if there was ever a time to get this done,

It's now with President Trump when he has the House and the Senate behind him. And I'm not surprised that there is frustration from people that were really passionate and are still passionate when this much time goes by and we're not able to get those things done that we thought we'd be able to. So NASA's budget last year, $25 billion. Break it down for us. How was that money being spent? What are the dimensions upon which you would kind of categorize that budget?

And we'll talk about kind of what's going forward. Yeah, I mean, look, I think an incredibly large portion of it is with human spaceflight and specifically the Artemis program and SLS. And it's a lot of billions going to a disposable rocket. It is billions that when you're talking. I mean, I think it's like.

five or 600% overrun to build the mobile launcher two for the next generation SLS. So... Sorry, just tell us what SLS is for the audience. That's the Space Launch System, I think, or...

It's, uh, they also call it the Senate launch system, I think. And, uh, it's spread across, um, a lot of dollars are spread across some key States. Well, just to give you an idea. So SLS is just repurposed shuttle hardware. So, uh, and I don't blame anyone for putting us down this path because at the time you did not have blue origin or SpaceX or any of these other commercial companies doing the things that are doing today, but they were like, let's, uh,

let's take the shuttle program parts and put it into a program called constellation. And let's take the constellation parts and put it in a program called, uh, SLS. And, and essentially, again, it's the, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the same shuttle motors. It's the same, uh, solid rocket boosters. You're basically taking the tank and putting Orion on top of it. Orion is 20 years old, by the way, it hasn't flown humans yet. And it's incredibly expensive and very disposable, but it creates a lot of jobs in certain States. And, um,

And look, there's enough hardware now to fly a couple missions and make sure you beat China back to the moon. But you can't be stuck on this forever. This is literally the equivalency, by the way, of taking P-51 Mustangs from World War II and using them in Desert Storm because we got to keep the plants open. And that obviously makes no logical sense whatsoever. For factories that are making this stuff that used to make landing ships in World War II that

that made Saturn rocket that pivoted to shuttle to SLS. And now to believe that you can't make another pivot is kind of crazy. And the right thing you should pivot towards, honestly, is nuclear. I want to just talk about the Trump budget proposal for NASA. So this is the NASA budget over the history of NASA. And the

proposed budget would basically create the lowest budget since 1961. So they're proposing to reduce the overall budget from 25 billion a year down to 19 billion a year. Were you part of the conversation on building this budget? And then I'll highlight some of the features of this budget here in a moment. But did you have conversations with the administration as this was being put together and some of these proposals were being considered? I mean, how deep have you gone in this?

No, you know, when you're a nominee, you're actually kept in the dark on a lot of things. You do get briefed on everything that's going on with every center, you know, every major program, things that senators could ask you about from a from like a one on one perspective. But you're not given access to sensitive information. You almost need some deniability when you're talking to senators on that.

or else your nominations could get held up really big time. So I wasn't aware. I honestly, I was voted out of committee, you know, the Commerce Committee by, you know, Senator Cruz and, you know, 18 other, it was 19 senators in total. And the next day, the skinny budget came out. And if that skinny budget had come out, you know, again, a day or two earlier, I would never have made it out of committee. Because obviously, as I think is playing out right now, both sides of the aisle are not happy about the, you know, the budget.

Okay, so in this budget, there's a proposal to cancel SLS and Orion, terminate numerous robotic science missions, including the Mars sample return mission, probes to Venus, and several future space telescopes. And it represents the White House's desire to end the development of a nuclear thermal rocket engine. I guess having scrutinized this budget, how do you react to what you see being proposed?

And does it solve what you've identified as some of the challenges in NASA? Or are those more management challenges? Does budget create a constraining force here that fixes some of the issues with respect to focus and concentration of capital into the right projects for you from your point of view? Yeah, it's a it's a it's an excellent question. So so first, like, look, the the the

the reduction, the big budget reduction is a great forcing function for change. And I know there's a lot of people that probably don't want to, don't want to hear that, but it is true. That doesn't mean I would have landed at 19 billion in this whole thing, but I fully support the president and, and,

with the goal of shrinking the budget and getting back to responsible footing. And I do think billions can go a very long way. So I will just start with that. Everything you just said directionally is kind of in the right direction. We've already got paid for enough SLS hardware that if you were to terminate for convenience now, you got enough to launch like two or three of them. It's enough to get you back to the moon. Check that box.

to make sure that you don't have any economic or scientific or national security reasons to stay on the moon and put your energy much more towards commercial industry. Look, nuclear thermal propulsion,

I'm not a fan of. I like nuclear electric. Nuclear thermal, to test it, you're spewing radioactive debris here on Earth. It's not going to go over well to anyone. And it doesn't really solve your refueling problem. You still need to top it off with hydrogen in space if you want a reusable space plug. So I don't like that either. And it's subscale. It's a program that sits in a lab forever.

Like what you need in nuclear electric, I'm passionate on the subject, is you need us to get back to the good old days. Like we went from the atomic bomb in 1945 to laying the keel on the Nautilus in 1951. Five, six years. We didn't keep it in the lab forever. We said, you know what? We're going to do big, bold things. And that's what we need to be doing in space when it comes to...

uh to nuclear look a lot of the science programs i'm huge fans of mars sample return the best thing you do is when the astronauts get there to bring the samples home why would we spend billions to send a robotic mission we can put that into commercial industry and accelerate their timeline so i'm not i wasn't a fan of a pure robotic mission on that one and you know a lot of the big science programs i want to see james webb's and hubble telescope programs launching annually if not more um

Like flagship programs definitionally are billion dollar spends. And if you spend a billion, then you got to get it right. And that means lots of requirements and we can't take unnecessary risk. And a billion becomes a three billion program and it's never on time. Like we should be challenging the best and brightest. Give me 10, $100 million missions a year.

Let's try that. And let's accept that three fail and get, you know, I was going to introduce like time to science as a KPI. Like how, why don't, why do we accept things taking 10 years when they could be a year? Even the decadal process of prioritizing scientific missions over a 10 year span is kind of insane. 100%, 100%. And I think a lot of people hear budget cuts and I hear this on the NIH side as well now.

that the administration and budget cutting is gonna take lives, people are gonna lose lives, we're gonna lose science. This is an anti-science agenda. But if you can get more efficient

with how you deploy capital and how you manage the deployment of that capital and the utilization of that capital, you actually accelerate science. You accelerate outcomes and you improve the condition and the prosperity for humanity, for America. And it's completely a misdirected statement when people say that a budget cut

is an anti-science movement. It's about finding the right places that you get more outcomes and redeploy in a smarter, more efficient way. It drives me nuts. I just see it all over right now. - That's just, I mean, it's just politics. - I do think overfunding leads to complacency, leads to bureaucracy, which actually leads to a slowdown

in discovery, a slowdown in invention, a slowdown in progress. Anyway, I'm sorry for my rant. I agree. Look, as I mean, as entrepreneurs, we know like some of our probably best decision making is always when we were running low on cash. So, you know, it kind of drives efficiency and it is a, you know, necessity, mother of all invention there. Yeah, I think that's just a product of some of our, and I'm not familiar with any of the NIH and I'm not pretending to go deep on that at all. Just, I do think this is kind of a product of a,

of the politics of our time. It's a very divided country. You know, people have to take an opposing view and go to extremes. People will die over this, but the government is terrible capital allocators.

Come on, we should all know that. And, you know, we should as taxpayers, we should be contributing to the things that no one else is willing to do where there is no good business use case or economic model. You know, it is in, you know, if competition is working, they can solve a lot of problems and we should put our energy to what they won't solve. And look, I think Kratios, by the way, in science, he's a great leader. I've spoken to a bunch of times.

He's not a quack, he doesn't think wild things like that. He wants the golden age of science and discovery. - Good science. - I'm fair. - Good science, yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk about Artemis. I think this is a big piece that the American public doesn't fully grok, that we have this effort. And maybe you can just lay out for us the case for Artemis, lay out for us the case for Mars, tell us about the relationship between the two and the timelines.

Sure. And why, yeah, why are we doing them? Let's just say I am in the return to the moon camp. That doesn't mean like, uh, you know, I, and I'm, I know that, you know, Elon is very focused on, on Mars and he has a lot of great reasons why, including just the survival of our species. I mean, long-term it is the right move. I remember, um,

During my hearing, one senator was really grilling me a lot of like, well, really, what's the difference between, you know, moon and Mars? And, you know, isn't moon the stepping stone? I'm like, well, one's a planet, you know, and, you know, it has an atmosphere. And if you looked at the moon, it doesn't look pretty. I mean, it's getting beat up all the time. It has no protection from, you know, for solar radiation. So reactivation.

reality is like, you should go to the moon if it, because for 35 years, we said we were going to, and I think that's very important. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's very late in the game to say, well, we did it in the sixties and early seventies, you know, that would have been the fine position to state the entire time that we've done it and we're moving on, but we didn't for 35 years. We said, we're going back and we spent over a hundred billion of taxpayer dollars saying we were going to do it. And for us not to be able to do it now and watch China do it. Like I said, it's,

it signals a far greater disease across our government and how our system operates. And I don't think we want that reckoning. So look, we paid for the hardware anyway. Let's go back, but let's parallel going to Mars. So that's what Artemis is really about. I mean, you can say Artemis is about Mars too, but that's like 100 years down the line. And like I said, it's a giant disposable rocket program that repurposes shuttle hardware. It's incredibly expensive. We signed up a lot of international partners to support it because we like collecting flags, right?

And it doesn't necessarily always mean that what they're contributing to is in the best interest of the program. Case in point, you know, we had, you know, gateway, man, like this is going down a rabbit hole of a lot of things because of the shortcomings of the vehicle, but it's expensive. It's disposable. It is not the way to do affordable, repeatable, efficient exploration, whether it's to moon, Mars or anywhere else. So,

So let's get it done and then focus on the right way to go about doing this so that we're not seeing people walk on the moon every five years or something crazy, that it's happening all the time, which is what we get excited about. What is there to do on the moon? Why should we go back? What is the purpose?

I think, you know, it's almost like, you know, if you're going to go and commit yourself, take risks in a conflict, you know, you want clear objectives. And in my mind, again, aside from the fact that the hardware is already essentially purchased, it's clear objectives. Is there any economic, scientific or national security reasons to be here? And I don't think we can say that conclusively right now that there are none. And China is going.

And if they were to find something, even a small probability of 1%, let's just say hypothetically it's helium-3 and they're going to usher in a new form of power. Think about how many conflicts that we've had over the last century over sources of power, over energy.

Do we want to get that one wrong? And are we willing to take a 1% chance that could shift the balance of power here on earth? I don't think so. And we said we were going to do it for 35 years. And we spent $100 billion in taxpayer money. And like I said, the hardware is there. But I think you do it. You make those determinations. Is there scientific, economic, or national security reason to be here? And if not, you move on. And if companies like

Blue Origin and SpaceX and even Rocket Lab are successful with their vehicles, you're going to have like the optionality to go to the moon. It's not, the delta V is a negligible difference between whether you're going to the moon or Mars. And we should colonize Mars? We should build a colony on Mars?

I think we need to go there. And by going there, it is the first step on a far grander journey. You know, and, you know, Elon is obviously very passionate about it, Occupy Mars. Like, he knows it's not the perfect destination. There's nothing, like you can, you know, it's unlike anything in Earth's history. You know, people say it's analogs to, you know, the explorers of the 1400s are putting people in like those shipping containers for six months and saying, we know how to live on Mars. It's bullshit.

You know, you could work your whole life on Mars and you still live in a bubble. You know, so it's not like it's not going to be an easy way of life, but it is a step in the right direction. Like our destiny is out and along the stars. Like we will inevitably learn something out there that's going to change our thinking. And we're it's going to it's going to create a craving for that knowledge. And we are going to want to continue to go out and explore and learn even more. Mars is the best step first step on that journey. So let's talk about finance.

Getting there and achieving some of the other missions that we might have as a country, as a species, and the relationship with private industry. Elon believes he can get payload into orbit for $10 per kilogram with the Starship platform, which is call it a roughly 100x reduction in cost. Yeah. Maybe more. Depending on the point at which you're measuring it, maybe a 1,000x reduction in cost.

And that unlocks the potential to do these things in an economically viable way, going to the moon, going to Mars. Why shouldn't NASA be more fully embracing of this private industry capability? Is it because it's Elon or is it because it reduces money going to defense contractors? What is the motivation against that?

going all in on this company, SpaceX or companies like it that have built these competencies that would have been unfathomable just a few decades ago, but are real here today. Oh, this is such a deep conversation. Uh, so, um,

Look, one thing I'd say is like, obviously, I love SpaceX and they safely put me into space twice and two awesome missions brought me home and I'm cheering them on. I'm happy with SpaceX is doing. I'm thrilled about the investments that Blue Origin is doing, that Rocket Lab is doing, you know, Firefly. So it's like we have a great industry. So the broader question is just why isn't NASA leaning more into commercial? Well, look, it's NASA's foresight that

gave birth to the commercial crew program that enabled even me to go to space. So like they are thinking in that direction, but there are politics in play. And the nice thing is, is those winds are shifting.

Throughout my whole confirmation process, you are educated heavily by some very smart political folks. They sherpa you around every senator. And they were like, look, a year ago, two years ago, the idea of talking to senators that are in SLS states and convincing them we need to be looking a little bit more to the future with commercial and maybe pivoting to things like nuclear propulsion would be

a non-starter. And I'll tell you, they were very reasonable. All of them were very reasonable that they know that you're, you know, this, this rocket built on 60 year old technology, that's four and a half billion dollars of launch has an expiration date. So I do think like that

That ship is turning. It's just this isn't like this isn't a speedboat. The government, you know, it's it's turning like it's a giant shipping container. It turns a half a degree like a year. And and that's not obviously fast enough for a lot of us. But I would say it's moving in that that direction. And then NASA also has to, you know, repurpose its resources on things that a SpaceX or Blue Origin won't do. They're not going to put a rock. They're not going to build a nuclear reactor and launch it immediately.

You're not going to get the indemnities for that. Even shipping highly enriched uranium is a nightmare. That is what the government should be doing. So NASA should be doing what the commercial industries can't. And that, by the way, takes so much stress off a company like SpaceX trying to get to Mars. If you can minimize the number of space-based refueling or the in-situ resource manufacturing, look, even when a Starship gets to Mars, you're betting on like

you know, a hundred consecutive miracles happening to mine propellant there and bring it back. NASA should be helping. The government should be helping with that because it creates a lot of other optionality. We can have, you know, nuclear battle stars in low Earth orbit, you know, as part of Golden Dome. There's a lot of reasons why, you know, it's not all SpaceX, all commercial versus NASA. It's both. So just to compare, last week, Space Epoch, a Chinese rocket company, completed its first sea recovery test.

So much like we saw a few years ago with SpaceX, they had a vertical launch and they landed back in the ocean about 125 second flight. The key question a lot of folks are now asking, has China caught up? Is this a space race? Why does it matter? Because isn't space big enough for everyone? I mean, space is the ultimate high ground and the high ground has mattered ever

You know, it's had tactical and strategic significance since like the beginning of humankind. It matters. I was grateful to have the opportunity to lead, you know, the peaceful exploration of space, but it's not all peaceful. Like we can't be naive to the fact that it has been weaponized.

And, you know, China leading in this domain makes a difference. There are things of scientific and economic and, again, national security value out there. And we can't, we have to lead. We can't fall behind. If we fall behind, we may never catch up. So, and I am concerned about that, you know, China moving closer to reusability. They launch the second most orbital rockets every year without reusability. You know, thank goodness for SpaceX or we'd definitely be already behind in that regard. So, yeah.

I am concerned about it. It honestly, it is a race. And like, yeah, the domain is vitally important. We can't fall behind. So that gives them the high ground with respect to weapons systems, with respect to observational platforms, sensors, etc. Right. Yeah.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your nomination. You seem, I would give you my vote. You should be the administrator of NASA. It would be amazing. Thanks. You testified in front of the Senate committee on April 9th. I think it was a 19 to 9 vote to move you out of committee. Yes. Then there were reports going into this weekend that you were going to be voted on by the full Senate this week. And the estimates were you were going to get 70 confirmation votes or that was some news report I had read. So it seems like you were going to fly right through and

administer NASA. Um, so then what happened? So, I mean, I got a call, um, Friday of last week that, um, you know, the, uh, the president has decided to go into a, uh, go in a different direction. Uh, it was a, um, uh, it was a real bummer. And I, uh, I know like a number of parties in government need to be notified of that, which, um,

you know, I expected to kind of have just a peaceful weekend. And the next thing I knew on Saturday, you know, it was, there was a lot of activity on the internet. But maybe that's just like my perspective, because I follow space and such. But it was certainly, you know, disappointing. But, you know, the president needs to have, you know, his person that, you know, he counts on to fulfill the agenda. And yeah, I... The person that called you, what was, what did they tell you was the reason the president was withdrawing his nomination?

I just said the president had decided to go in a different direction. We all served at the pleasure of the president. Now, I mean, I started to get some more details as it went on. I honestly also like I'm not like I don't like play dumb on this. Like I had a pretty good idea of, you know, that, you know, I don't think that the timing was much of a coincidence that, you know, there was other changes going on the same day. And, you know, it was kind of obviously a little bit of a disappointment.

So, are you referring to Elon? I'm just, you know, there was, obviously, there was more than one, you know, departure that was covered on that day. And it became, you know, at least from what I've heard, that it was, there was a, you know, there was, and I'm just, you know, I read the news same as everybody else. But I, you know, I had, obviously, it was in the, in DC for the last six months getting ready that, you know, there were some people that, you know,

you know, that had some access to grind, I guess. And, uh, and I was a good visible, uh,

target. I know they're like the news talks a lot about like that, you know, democratic donations is the cause. That was not a new development. You just Google you can they're all public. The New York Times published an article saying that President Trump knew about your democratic donations in the past when you received the nomination. So that was actually not news. According to the New York Times that that was well understood and well covered. So kind of

put the kibosh on that explanation. So what are the axes to grind? Are the axes to grind with Elon? Are there kind of two factions? Whatever you can kind of provide some color on, I think it would be really helpful to understand because there's a lot of speculation going on right now. And I would say some folks are really disappointed in some of the transitions that are taking place. And some folks are really trying to grok it and understand it. So anything you can do to help folks understand would be

you know, I think helpful. You know, first, I just, I want to be overwhelmingly clear. I don't fault the president at all. I fully support him. You know, the president of the United States, you know, the leader of the free world makes a thousand decisions a day with seconds of information. He's got to get a lot more right than wrong. So I don't, I mean, you know, I don't blame, you know, an influential advisor coming in and saying, look, here's the facts and I think we should kill this guy. And the president's got to make a call and move on. I think that's exactly, you know, kind of how it went.

It was not the Senate at all. You don't get floor time. By the way, you know, there's 100 nominees that are like waiting for floor time. The only way you get floor time is when a lot of senators, you know, call Senator Thune and say, this is our guy and we got to move him along. That's how you know it's like a high, you're going to get a high vote count. So the Senate was very fair, really nice. I enjoyed that experience. I...

You know, I think you got one person and I don't know the history on like what the trigger was or wasn't, but, you know, decided to to kind of make a move. And again, I don't fault the president for it at all. But, you know, look, in terms of donations, I I've always been, you know, somewhat of a moderate. I actually like I am like a right leaning. I do support, you know, the president's agenda. That's why I made as big of a donation as I did to his cause. Let me just ask for clarity. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.

I was just going to say, like, when you fill out your questionnaire for the Senate committee, which is public, it asks you to list every donation before you go in front of a single senator. Before you do a hearing, you do these prep sessions at the White House where people pretend to be senators and they prepped you on the donation question. So like that wasn't new news might have been new to the president at that, you know, might have refreshed his memory, perhaps. But I don't I don't think that was a cause. I think the media has got it pretty accurate.

So was this a shot at Elon by someone that is anti-Elon? 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 to check out to me. And what is the root of that? Is it vested interest in spending that Elon is advocating gets cut? Is it diametrically opposed philosophical points of view on the role of government? What is the root anti-Elon sentiment

that is kind of on the other side of the equation here, do you think? I mean, I think that the people overwhelmingly voted for the president to go in and shrink the government and bring about change and get rid of fraud, waste, and abuse, of which I am a thousand percent behind the president. And I believe that that's what, you know, Elon and Doge was working towards. But I

people also hate change like we all know this and um you know people can uh be very protective of their empire and you know when somebody comes in you know elon's got a playbook and i think he knows how to get things done and i and i i think you know in a lot of respects that um that rub some people or you know what i think it was one of you know or um had some axes to grind i don't know and uh

And, you know, we're just waiting. I don't, you know, I don't want to speculate on all this, but. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that you've said enough. And I guess you've seen the tweets from Elon today where he was pretty negative about the House bill.

that is being labeled the big beautiful bill, making the case that it's actually gonna drive up a government deficit to over $2 trillion, $2.5 trillion a year. It doesn't make deep enough cuts. There's a lot of pork in there, a lot of wasteful spending in there. And then the House speaker today responded to Elon saying, hey, we've still got a rescission bill coming. We've still got an appropriation bill coming where we're gonna start to fix the budget. But clearly Elon is now getting vocal

about his point of view on this. Have you spoken with him at all about what's going on and government spending and his kind of take on things as he's walked out of the office there? Well, you know, as you kind of mentioned, that's what I told the Senate too. Like I've only spoken to Elon, you know, I don't know, a couple dozen times, most of which related to human spaceflight missions. But when I was talking to him towards the end of last year, it was all on government efficiency related programs. And I think Elon got a lot of people

excited about Doge by making like one simple point, the interest rate on the national debt exceeds, you know, the DOD budget. That's scary. And it's getting worse. And we can't spend our way out of this problem, which we've grown a habit to doing. And I know he's very passionate about it. And, you know, he sacrificed a lot along with all the others, you know, at Doge to try and bring about some significant, you know, spending cuts.

And then, you know, to see a bill come in, you know, whatever, 1,200 pages or so that, you know, adds, you know, to the deficit, I think was pretty, you know, pretty disheartening. I suspect. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not in this fight. And I think like trying to codify like, you know, a handful of billions in cuts probably is, you know, a drop in the bucket. So I can't imagine that's too exciting. You think he's going to get more vocal? I don't know.

I don't, I wouldn't presume to know what goes on through his mind. Like I said, I think he spends a lot of time trying to solve a lot of world's problems and a problem for this country. And I think a lot of people agree with it is that the, you know, this national debt is just getting way out of hand.

I mean, this has been my case for about four years that if we don't fix this, it eventually becomes an intractable debt spiral. And when that happens, all of the wrangling we're doing over budget, priorities, programs, interests, jobs are no longer possible. It's like you're trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. You don't get the choice of what programs to fund when there is no funding. And that's the unfortunate iceberg we're running into. Do you think Doge is dead?

Any point of view on that? I mean, it was interesting. Obviously, there was kind of the grand exit this past week. And then, I don't know, at least in my Twitter feed, I try and follow a lot of the cabinet secretaries. They were all coming out and saying, Doge is alive and well embedded inside the... I think it was more implying that we're going to clean house. We're going to take care of our own house as opposed to letting other people help us do it. Problem is, we haven't been very successful at that historically. So I suspect going into the midterms, people don't want to...

let the other side be pounding the table on Doge. So I don't know. I mean, look, I've been an outsider nominee, so I have no idea how it'll play out. But I think that some, I imagine some people in the government want to see it go quiet late in the night. Is there a deep state? And does the deep states, like, is it too big to break? You know, I don't, I don't, I don't like know what I would classify a deep state or not. Like there are, there are, there is an absolutely bloated bureaucracy that

Uh, hates change, uh, gets very entrenched that is happy to ride out, uh, political appointees. Like, you know what, you're gone in three, four years or, you know, you're dead before you even arrive. Uh, we'll wait you out.

So I think there's some of that. Uh, and then I think there's some of that in with actual, you know, uh, politicians and political appointees that, um, uh, advocate like hell for the status quo. And some of it might be good intended because they're just afraid of what comes next. And, you know, why, um,

why take a risk when you've got something right now that supposedly works? And I ask like, you know, what if that comes at the competitiveness of the nation and our economic security? What if we get it wrong because you weren't willing to take some risk and make changes? So I don't think they're necessarily all evil, by the way. I just think some people get very comfortable in the status quo. Are you going to go back to space? I don't know. You know, this is like the first time in

26 years that I've been, you know, really kind of out of work. I'm sure I'm definitely going to go back and help shift for I won't ever rob my CEO of his well deserved, you know, title. Now, I'll probably be an exec chair or something. And, you know, I got to work, I got to have a mission. But I'll find something to contribute to. And man, I love I love flying and I love space. And I like the philanthropic efforts we've been doing with St. Jude. So I'll keep busy.

Amazing. Well, look, you've been, if nothing, Jared, an inspiration to many. I appreciate your commitment to service, your commitment to charity, your commitment to discovery. And I want to thank you for the time today. It's been really great talking with you. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate having the opportunity to chat.