Trump renominates billionaire Musk ally to lead NASA

Donald Trump has relaunched his information of a billionaire backstage astronaut to beryllium the caller NASA main and pb the abstraction bureau "into a bold caller era".

Jared Isaacman, an state of SpaceX brag Elon Musk, was primitively nominated by the US president successful the spring, but the rug was pulled astatine the past infinitesimal implicit his erstwhile donations to Democrats.

Now, successful a abrupt reversal, Mr Trump has decided Isaacman is, aft all, the champion idiosyncratic for the job.

"Jared's passionateness for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and unlocking the caller abstraction economy, marque him ideally suited to pb NASA into a bold caller era," helium wrote successful a station connected his societal media level Truth Social.

Isaacman, the erstwhile main enforcement of the outgo processing institution Shift4, has doubly been to abstraction successful commercially funded missions with SpaceX.

Last twelvemonth helium became the first backstage national to execute a spacewalk.

Although helium has wide enactment wrong the US abstraction industry, helium remains a arguable fig successful Republican circles, and inactive needs to beryllium approved successful a Senate hearing.

Isaacman doesn't look to clasp a grudge implicit his occupation connection being cancelled past clip round.

He said connected X: "Thank you, Mr President @POTUS, for this opportunity. It volition beryllium an grant to service my state nether your leadership.

"The enactment from the space-loving assemblage has been overwhelming.

"I americium not definite however I earned the spot of truthful many, but I volition bash everything I tin to unrecorded up to those expectations."

If Isaacman is cleared to instrumentality up the job, helium faces the daunting task of putting the US abstraction programme backmost connected way and beating China successful a caller abstraction contention to onshore astronauts connected the moon.

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The Artemis programme has been earnestly delayed. That's partially due to the fact that of problems with the Orion capsule that volition instrumentality astronauts to and from lunar orbit, but mostly due to the fact that the SpaceX Starship mega-rocket that is expected to past shuttle the unit down to the aboveground has struggled to adjacent orbit Earth.

Sean Duffy, the impermanent NASA main and erstwhile world TV star, precocious criticised the tardy improvement of Starship and said helium would reopen the declaration for the lunar landing to SpaceX competitors.

Musk responded connected X: "The idiosyncratic liable for America's abstraction programme can't person a 2 digit IQ."

Isaacman supports the Artemis mission, though his committedness is unclear to the NASA-developed SLS rocket that is owed to motorboat connected its archetypal crewed trial formation astir the satellite adjacent year.

He said helium wants "more astronauts successful abstraction with greater frequency" and signalled that commercialized companies could progressively instrumentality implicit immoderate NASA activities portion it refocused backing connected "the near-impossible that nary 1 other volition enactment connected similar atomic electrical propulsion".