{"id":44560,"date":"2024-12-12T20:37:06","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T12:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasas-boss-to-be-proclaims-were-about-to-enter-an-age-of-experimentation\/"},"modified":"2024-12-12T20:37:06","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T12:37:06","slug":"nasas-boss-to-be-proclaims-were-about-to-enter-an-age-of-experimentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasas-boss-to-be-proclaims-were-about-to-enter-an-age-of-experimentation\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s boss-to-be proclaims we\u2019re about to enter an \u201cage of experimentation\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Florida\u2014On Wednesday, Jared Isaacman made his first public appearance since his nomination earlier this month to become NASA\u2019s next administrator. Although his remarks were short on specifics, Isaacman endorsed a vision that would signal radical departures from the way NASA does business.<\/p>\n

He talked of commercial investment, a thriving space economy, and going fast and taking risks. These talking points are familiar to anyone who has listened to NASA\u2019s leadership in recent years, and there has been tangible progress in the agency\u2019s partnerships with commercial companies. However, NASA is leaving some commercial expertise on the field, or in this case, on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love all about the commercial space industry right now,\u201d Isaacman said in a discussion at the Space Force Association\u2019s Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida. \u201cThey\u2019re all generally doing the same thing, which is putting a lot of their own dollars on the line because they believe in the future that it holds.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just launch. More startups are pursuing satellite manufacturing, Earth return vehicles, and commercial space stations. But rockets happen to be one of the most mature segments of the commercial space industry, and they attract a lot of attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlue Origin is putting a ton of their own money on the line,\u201d Isaacman said. \u201cI love everything that Rocket Lab did, as kind of another small scrappy startup that\u2019s doing great things. And, for sure, SpaceX and their approach with a fully reusable first and second stage. Pretty awesome stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blue Origin and SpaceX were founded by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who made their first fortune in other businesses. Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, didn\u2019t start out rich, but his company\u2019s success has made him a billionaire.<\/p>\n

Isaacman, too, is a wealthy entrepreneur. According to Forbes, he has a net worth of $1.9 billion, primarily from his stake as founder of Shift4, a mobile payments platform he established when he dropped out of high school at the age of 16. Isaacman later earned his GED and a bachelor\u2019s degree in aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also an accomplished pilot with a fleet of high-performance jets and flew to orbit two times on self-funded missions aboard SpaceX\u2019s Dragon spacecraft. Most recently, he commanded the Polaris Dawn mission in September, when he became the first person to perform a fully commercial spacewalk wearing a SpaceX-made spacesuit.<\/p>\n

Through his Polaris program, Isaacman has booked two more missions for him to fly to space with SpaceX. One of those is supposed to fly on another SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the other is slated to be the first crew flight on Starship. If confirmed by the Senate, Isaacman\u2019s next spaceflight might have to wait.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe future of the Polaris program is a little bit of a question mark at the moment,\u201d Isaacman said in a discussion with Matt Anderson, the Space Force Association\u2019s chief growth officer. \u201cIt may wind up on hold for a little bit. We\u2019ll have to see. But overall, I\u2019m just super passionate about humankind\u2019s future among the stars and what\u2019s approaching, because it\u2019s going to arrive a lot quicker than probably many of us think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spiraling to new heights<\/h2>\n

Isaacman didn\u2019t take questions from reporters Wednesday and didn\u2019t directly address his nomination to be NASA\u2019s next administrator. But he made a clear endorsement of commercial industry\u2019s agile, iterative approach to technology development and rebuked the government\u2019s top-down, or waterfall, model for big-money space projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cShockingly, the government does do business very differently than the rest of the country,\u201d Isaacman said.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has achieved the most success with the iterative, or spiral, development approach. Engineers experimented with rocket landings for several years before accomplishing the first intact recovery of a Falcon 9 booster. SpaceX is now test-flying its new Starship rocket in a similar manner, with each launch validating changes to the design and revealing which areas need more work.<\/p>\n

Cost reductions enabled by reusable rockets will \u201callow us to experiment in really grand ways,\u201d Isaacman said. \u201cYou talk about the cost to accelerate the mass to orbit coming down to such an extent that we can really figure things out and take risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jared Isaacman during training at SpaceX before the Polaris Dawn mission.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n SpaceX<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Isaacman has previously criticized the high costs of NASA\u2019s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. He didn\u2019t mention them by name, but his comments Thursday suggest he favors a different way forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the launch doesn\u2019t cost a half-billion dollars, we don\u2019t need to spend many, many years and lots of billions to get it right with some super exquisite asset, when you can get into a rhythm of using all of these providers to get things up very quickly to see what works and what doesn\u2019t, and then evolve into something else,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This is the way of spiral development, but this isn\u2019t the way NASA spends most of its human spaceflight budget.<\/p>\n

Flipping the script<\/h2>\n

NASA has partially embraced commercial space for a while. The agency signed contracts in 2008 with SpaceX and Orbital Sciences\u2014now part of Northrop Grumman\u2014to resupply the International Space Station with commercial cargo freighters. In 2014, two years after the first commercial cargo delivery to the ISS, NASA awarded contracts to SpaceX and Boeing to develop the commercially-owned Crew Dragon and Starliner spacecraft for astronaut missions.<\/p>\n

SpaceX launched the first commercial crew mission to the space station in 2020. The positive experience with commercial cargo and commercial crew led NASA to pursue a similar program to deliver experiments to the surface of the Moon with robotic landers. The Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program scored an early success with the first commercial Moon landing in February, but there\u2019s still much work to do to make these landings as reliable and repeatable as commercial missions to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

Most recently, NASA has signed deals\u2014fixed-price, service-based contracts like commercial cargo, crew, and CLPS\u2014for SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop human-rated lunar landers for the agency\u2019s Artemis program. NASA awarded a similar commercial contract to Axiom Space to design and build spacesuits to protect astronauts walking on the surface of the Moon and selected Maxar and Northrop Grumman for fixed-price contracts to develop elements of the agency\u2019s planned Gateway mini-space station in lunar orbit.<\/p>\n

As you read this list, it might seem NASA has already gone all-in with commercial space. But these are half-measures. To put a finer point on it, it\u2019s a little less than a half-measure. In 18 years, NASA has either spent or plans to spend close to $40 billion on these large fixed-price contracts.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, over about the same time period, NASA\u2019s Space Launch System rocket, Orion deep space crew capsule, and ground support system upgrades cost nearly $50 billion before the unpiloted Artemis I mission in 2022, according to an analysis by the Planetary Society. That sum has now risen to just shy of $60 billion.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The core stage for NASA\u2019s second Space Launch System rocket, set to fly on the Artemis II mission, was raised vertical and placed on a support fixture this week inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n NASA<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Artemis II, the next flight in NASA\u2019s Artemis program, is scheduled for launch with an SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft in 2026 to carry a crew of four astronauts around the far side of the Moon and back to Earth. Artemis III, as NASA currently envisions it, will launch no sooner than mid-2027 on another SLS and Orion, which will dock with SpaceX\u2019s Starship lander near the Moon for the final descent to the lunar south pole.<\/p>\n

No parts of the SLS rocket are reusable, and last year, NASA\u2019s inspector general estimated the next three Artemis crew launches will each cost $4.2 billion\u2014more than the agency\u2019s total spending to help SpaceX fund the development of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re about to enter an era of great experimentation,\u201d Isaacman said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Listening to the broader context of Isaacman\u2019s comments Wednesday, he may have meant this in not just a technical sense, but in the way NASA does business. The incoming Trump administration will certainly keep NASA\u2019s goal of landing people on the Moon, but the agency\u2019s new leaders are widely expected to assess how to achieve this goal without the budgetary burden of the SLS rocket. One solution might be to piece together elements from different rocket companies, like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance, to replicate the capabilities of the Space Launch System.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the best spaceship in the world right now in Dragon,\u201d Isaacman said. \u201cThis is what American astronauts go to the space station in routinely, every six months or so. But we\u2019re about to have this light switch-like moment when Starship comes online.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX has launched six full-scale test flights of the Starship rocket, and the next one is scheduled for January. SpaceX demonstrated the first catch of the rocket\u2019s enormous Super Heavy booster after a launch in October. Next year, SpaceX aims to catch the Starship upper stage after coming back from low-Earth orbit and kick off in-space refueling trials with two ships docked together.<\/p>\n

NASA will human-rate Starship for landings on the Moon, and SpaceX eventually plans to launch and land people on Earth using Starship. Once operational, Starship will be able to deliver payloads between 100 and 150 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, and with the advent of orbital refueling, will carry the same payload mass to the Moon, Mars, or other destinations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens when industry starts cranking out spaceships out of multiple factories? SpaceX has a great vision for this, but so does Blue Origin. You\u2019ve got Rocket Lab building a brand-new behemoth rocket,\u201d Isaacman said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have lots and lots of people in space at one time, and that\u2019s why I call it a light switch-like moment, where a lot of things are going to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s spending levels peaked relative to the entire federal budget in 1966, when funding for the space program accounted for 4.4 percent of all government spending. In the last few years, this has fallen to about 0.5 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can do some pretty awesome things when you can write that big of a check,\u201d Isaacman said. \u201cWe can go to the Moon. We can bring people back safely. That\u2019s pretty awesome, but we\u2019re going into a new era now where some of this funding can come privately, through commercial endeavors, but still for the benefit of everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Florida\u2014On Wednesday, Jared Isaacman made his first public appearance since his nomination earlier this month to become NASA\u2019s next administrator. Although his remarks were short on specifics, Isaacman endorsed a vision that would signal radical departures from the way NASA does business. He talked of commercial investment, a thriving space economy, and going fast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[304,1545,720,625,190,317],"class_list":["post-44560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-artemis","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-jared-isaacman","tag-moon","tag-nasa","tag-starship"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}