One-time Space Shuttle pilot and ISS Commander Scott Kelly predicts Jared Isaacman will bring a new energy and sense of purpose as head of the world’s most powerful space agency.
Kelly, who flew the Space Shuttle for more than a decade, and commanded the Shuttle Endeavor during a mission to assemble the International Space Station, tells me in an interview that “NASA should feel lucky to have him lead.”
Acing a Senate confirmation hearing on his appointment to lead NASA, Isaacman sketched out details of his masterplan to launch NASA astronauts to the Moon and Mars, and vowed to push forward the “greatest adventure in human history - the quest to discover the secrets of the universe.”
Isaacman, a space philanthropist who aims to democratize space exploration as the future unfolds, has “laid out a vision for NASA and for the future of spaceflight,” says Rick Tumlinson, a prominent American space visionary who has long advocated for human settlements in what he calls “Free Space,” and on the Moon and Mars, via his EarthLight Foundation.
Isaacman “can galvanize NASA to focus on Mars,” Tumlinson tells me in an interview.
And by launching the first interplanetary treks by humans, he adds, “America could lead the way across the solar system.”
Astronaut Kelly says Isaacman’s outreach missions - by funding experimental space-gear for astronauts of tomorrow, or rushing life-saving medical aid into bomb-blasted Ukraine - reflect his deeper drive to shape a more perfect world - or worlds - of the future.
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Isaacman himself told me in an interview, after the Polaris Dawn mission he led last summer, that he tested out a futuristic space capsule and spacesuits to help pave the way for generations of explorers to touch down around the ancient silver craters of the Moon, and across the mysterious ruddy dunes of Mars.
He financed that Earth-circling flight, and its tech breakthroughs, and invited two of SpaceX’s top engineers onto the voyage to help them perfect and ramp up astronaut training programs for the rising waves of spacefarers he predicts will lift off across the new millennium.
Scott Kelly, who gained fame as a test pilot - first of jet fighters and then of the Space Shuttle - teamed up with two dozen other astronauts to send a missive to the leaders of the Senate space committee reviewing Isaacman’s anointment by the White House to head NASA.
In the speedily expanding sphere of rival space powers, they wrote, “Our nation is at a turning point where we face international competition.”
With the U.S. already vying to stay ahead in this new-millennium space race, the American aeronauts added, “The stakes in selecting the next NASA Administrator could not be higher. We believe that Jared Isaacman is uniquely qualified to lead NASA at this critical juncture.”
“Jared has a genuine passion for space exploration.”
“He’s definitely passionate about spaceflight and about Mars,” Kelly adds during our interview.
Isaacman’s expansive philanthropy extends from the realm of the heavens - with his altruistic space sojourns - to hotspots back on Earth.
Kelly says when he was appointed an ambassador for the UNITED24 charitable foundation launched by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he told Isaacman about its goal of speeding new ambulances into Ukraine to replace those targeted and destroyed by invading Russian troops.
Isaacman quickly made a generous donation to U24, he says.
Leaders of U24, including President Zelensky, report that Kelly has himself emerged as an extraordinary Good Samaritan for those injured in war-torn Ukraine. To fund a first gift to the foundation, they say, Kelly “immortalized his space adventures through NFTs, in an art series titled ‘Dreams Out of This World.’”
Kelly’s off-world NFTs were auctioned off just weeks after the Kremlin began its missile blitzkrieg across Ukraine, they add, and he donated $500,000 in proceeds to help Ukraine recover.
Like fellow United24 envoys - from Virgin Galactic billionaire Richard Branson to Star Wars Jedi Mark Hamill - Kelly has aided crusades to send medical equipment into Ukraine’s bombarded hospitals, remove Russian landmines from lands recaptured from the invaders, and build bomb shelters against the non-stop missile barrages.
Jared Isaacman likewise rushed to the besieged democracy’s side, personally organizing and piloting an airlift of medical supplies to the blitzed country during the early days of the war.
While delivering the humanitarian relief, Isaacman vowed that he “stands with Ukraine and its brave citizens and all those fighting for freedom across the world.”
On receiving a massive blue and gold Ukrainian banner from the anti-Russian resistance, Isaacman pledged that during his next orbital odyssey, he would “take this Ukrainian flag to a place in space that still remains beyond the reach of tyranny."
Jared Isaacman - who says he stands in awe of the great space-based observatories that are unlocking the astrophysical secrets of the universe - told me he has proposed to NASA that he finance and lead a special mission aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule to boost the Hubble Space Telescope into a higher, sanctuary orbit.
Atmospheric drag is pulling the telescope back toward Earth, and a powerful boost could ensure its longevity.
So far, NASA hasn’t approved Isaacman’s rescue plan, so I asked Kelly, who in 1999 piloted the Space Shuttle Discovery on a journey to upgrade the Hubble, if he could join Isaacman’s proposed SOS operation.
“I might,” he says, yet adds there are “many current astronauts that would be much better for that mission.”
During the 1999 flight, Kelly joined a team of NASA and European Space Agency astronauts who gave the great telescope a new set of gyroscopes and an advanced computer - in a rescue mission that was lauded by astronomers around the world.
During one expedition to the ISS, Kelly says, he sent a digital dispatch to one of his own heroes - the writer Tom Wolfe - who immortalized the first ring of American astronauts to lift off a generation ago.
In a modern-day Odyssey, Wolfe sketched out a novelistic account of the test pilots-turned-astronauts who dared to ride the intercontinental ballistic missiles, with their nuclear warheads replaced by compact human capsules, that took off from American launch pads with the start of Space Race I.
Kelly says he was mesmerized by Wolfe’s masterpiece The Right Stuff, and its cast of space demigods, and sent an homage to the writer:
“I read your book and it changed my life,” he wrote to Wolfe. “You portrayed the early test pilots and astronauts in such a way that I could easily relate and made me think I could be just like them if I put my mind to it. It was the spark that set me on the course that has led me here to my year in space.”
“The Right Stuff,” he tells me, “absolutely changed my life.”
Meanwhile, Kelly predicts that Jared Isaacman’s passion to launch the first human explorers to Mars might actually see intrepid NASA astronauts lift off for the Red Planet, but only if Isaacman’s ascent to head NASA is matched by absolute government support for these inter-world missions, along with the funding they will require.
Space oracle Rick Tumlinson predicts Jared Isaacman himself might opt to pilot one of these fantastical flights.
“Given his background as an astronaut and relationship with Elon Musk and SpaceX,” Tumlinson predicts, “I would not be surprised if Jared Isaacman one day leads a mission to land on Mars.”
