ORLANDO, Fla. — Former NASA administrator nominee Jared Isaacman says he is interested in pursuing some of the goals he had for the agency from outside it.
Isaacman received the National Space Society’s Wernher von Braun Award June 21 on behalf of Polaris Dawn, the private astronaut mission in September 2024 he commanded. The award ceremony at the International Space Development Conference here was one of his first public appearances since the White House withdrew his nomination to be NASA administrator three weeks earlier.
Isaacman, in a speech and fireside chat at the awards ceremony, said little about his nomination, focusing instead on his spaceflight experience. He did discuss the withdrawn nomination and plans for NASA in a podcast earlier in the month, including his desire for NASA to prioritize “needle-mover” programs and reduce bureaucracy.
In comments after the speech, he said there was no single thing he wanted to do most had he been confirmed as NASA administrator. “It was just getting the agency back to doing again the near-impossible. There’s just a lot of ‘littles’ that were going on that are all pretty cool, but a lot of them could be done by others.”
His priorities had he led NASA, he said, included getting humans back to the moon and getting on a “good path towards at least starting to get to Mars.” Another, he said, was investing in nuclear electric propulsion (NEP), a technology he said was important for Mars exploration.
He said he had wanted to try “to pivot the SLS states towards” NEP as he sought to phase out the Space Launch System. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, which oversees work on SLS, is also involved in nuclear propulsion technologies.
Another goal he had was for NASA to partner with academic organizations on missions where such organizations would have had a bigger role in funding. “My priorities would have been leadership in space and the orbital economy,” he said, “and trying to introduce a concept where NASA could help enable others to conduct interesting scientific missions, getting academic organizations to contribute.”
That was something he said he might be interested in pursuing outside the agency. “I wouldn’t mind maybe trying to put that to a test and see if you could fund an interesting robotic mission, just to show that it can be done, and try and get some of the top tier academic institutions who want to perform. So that’s on my mind.”
The White House’s withdrawal of his nomination came a day after NASA released its detailed fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, which seeks a nearly 25% reduction in overall NASA spending and steeper cuts in areas like science and space technology. The budget, for example, eliminated funding for nuclear propulsion, concluding such “efforts are costly investments, would take many years to develop, and have not been identified as the propulsion mode for deep space missions.”
In his fireside chat, he said people are “rightfully” upset about the cuts, but still was optimistic. “When you zoom out a little bit from this turbulence, you’re going to see this is the best time in human spaceflight since probably the first chapter in the 1960s,” he said.
He argued that “it’s not going to be less than $20 billion in one year that the U.S. government is going to commit to science and discovery in space.” The budget proposal sought just $18.8 billion for NASA in 2026, $6 billion less than 2025.
“You have the wealthiest people, like two wealthiest people in the world, that are happy to commit their resources on enabling capabilities for space to be experienced by the many, for us to go beyond the boundaries of our of our planet,” he added, a reference to SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.
Isaacman’s Polaris Dawn mission was intended to be the first of three missions he planned to fund, although he set those plans aside after he was nominated to lead NASA. He said in the fireside chat that, for now, he is spending “catchup time” with his family, taking advantage of his first extended break from work since he was 16.
He left the door open, though, for a return to space. “I don’t think I’ve flown my last mission, but I’m not necessarily sure exactly what form that may take. So, we’ll have to see.”
