It’s ill-advised to juggle two full-time jobs unless you have to financially support yourself. However, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is laying the groundwork to make his second job as interim NASA Administrator permanent. The purported plans of withdrawn nominee Jared Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut, have fallen into the hands of legislators and lobbyists over the past few weeks. Signs point to Duffy as the source of the leak. With the dire state of the country’s air traffic control system, he was probably not the most qualified candidate for the position.
The 62-page plan titled “Athena” details the plans that Isaacman had for NASA if Congress confirmed his nomination. According to Ars Technica, the version of “Athena” was an abridged document, given only to Duffy and his chief of staff by the billionaire as a courtesy in August. Isaacman’s plan has angered NASA’s traditional contractors because he would have re-evaluated the space agency’s spending, making appropriated dollars go further by relying more on the commercial space industry. The leak appeared to be an attempt to derail any attempt to renominate Isaacman, allowing Duffy to continue as interim administrator at a minimum. Despite the previous withdrawal, the private astronaut has continued to meet with President Trump to discuss space policy, according to CNBC.
Why isn’t Jared Isaacman leading NASA right now?
Isaacman seemed like the ideal nominee for NASA Administrator when Elon Musk was squatting in the White House. The 42-year-old became a billionaire after founding payment processor Shift4, then became a qualified military jet pilot and formed Draken International, the world’s largest private air force. Isaacman would partner with SpaceX in 2021 to organize and command Inspiration4, the first orbital spaceflight crewed exclusively by private astronauts. He then launched the Polaris program, his own privately funded space program with missions operated by SpaceX. Polaris Dawn, the inaugural mission, went relatively smoothly and featured the first commercial spacewalk. Isaacman wanted to lift the Hubble Space Telescope into a higher orbit for Polaris’ second mission, but NASA rejected the offer because of the risks involved.
The tone shifted once Trump began gutting the space agency. As the Oval Office threatened to cancel the Artemis program, Isaacman reiterated his ambitions for the agency to return astronauts to the Moon before China could achieve the feat for the first time. He also promised to cancel SpaceX’s Polaris contract to cut ties between himself and one of NASA’s largest contractors. The death knell for Isaacman’s nomination came in the wake of Trump and Musk falling out in a very public spat on social media. However, the administration claimed that his nomination was withdrawn because of his past political donations to Democrats, not because he was a Musk ally. The New York Times even reported that Trump was aware of these donations before he chose Isaacman as his nominee.
Capitol Hill intrigue aside, I can’t imagine fighting this hard to stay NASA Administrator when you’re already Transportation Secretary. Running a space program might be far more glamorous than trying to fix air traffic control, but the pay is worse and it’s not even a Cabinet-level position. Despite what some weird corners of the internet claim about the moon landings, everyone knows who Neil Armstrong is. No one knows who the NASA Administrator was during Apollo 11. For damn sure, no one is going to remember who led NASA during Artemis II.
