Welcome, Jared Isaacman

Welcome, Jared Isaacman. We who love NASA, or at least the idea of NASA, wish you the very best in taking leadership of the great American space agency. You seem to be an agent for change and NASA sorely needs that. Its human spaceflight program, which garners most of its public attention and financial support, is dysfunctional (unsustainable as in an earlier incarnation of a failed initiative) governed more by industry contracts and special-interest politics than by any space exploration or national purpose goal. Its robotic exploration program, which has been its hallmark of achievement, discovery and pride, is under attack, diminishing absolutely at home and relatively in the world. 

NASA’S current focus is budget — not achievement, not goals, not science, not exploration, not technology. If you take the helm, it appears you might change that. There is no question that more could be accomplished for less money. In the 1990s, the Clinton Administration kept reducing the NASA budget, and NASA still built the International Space Station, reinitiated Mars exploration, started an Astrobiology Institute, began a series of extraordinary exoplanet discoveries, started development of the James Webb Space Telescope and the New Horizons mission destined for Pluto and beyond. It got a boost when it was briefly thought that extraterrestrial life might have been discovered in a meteorite from Mars. You have a very similar opportunity right now with the potential discovery of life, or at least a biosignature, in a Martian sample sitting in an American test tube on the Martian surface, awaiting return to laboratories on Earth for chemical and biological analysis. But now the plan is to simply abandon it there — just as China conducts its Mars sample return mission in 2028, India begins developing its own, and Japan prepares to launch a sample return to the Martian moon Phobos. 

But it is the human program that dominates politics and budget and will demand your greatest attention. Politicians and industry seek another space race to the moon, despite the fact we already won that race. Should we really enter another expensive space race, this time likely to lose? You have spoken with new thinking about our human spaceflight program. We need that — starting with the purpose. The purpose should be exploration and technology — 21^st century technology, not a do-over the last century. That is, let’s operate on the moon (and later Mars) with telerobotics, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, with humans in the loop with their brains instead of as robot surrogates. Humans operating moon rovers and other devices will do more and cost less than the surface operation ideas of the last century. Using our strengths (technology, innovation, science) would be both a competitive advantage and leadership fold in the world. NASA needs to recognize that human and robotic exploration are one entity and that the two parts need to be made to work together. 

You have also spoken of operating NASA as more of a business. While science and exploration are not a business (I doubt there are commercial opportunities at Jupiter or collecting Martian samples), and you are correct to target NASA’s operating culture and push it out of the bureaucratic mentality into the performance one of business. We can do more for less. Not less for less — we do not have to give up greatness, the flagships the Mars Sample Return, Europa Clipper and the James Webb Space Telescope are expensive — but still a fraction of NASA’s exploration portfolio, and American achievement. Exploration is the context for these ventures, not simply small science. 

I am sure you will be welcomed as much as fresh air is welcomed in a vacuum. But I am also sure you will be besieged and pushed by those with self-interest, not national interest. You will need public support to overcome the former. That should be easy, the Martian rovers, the Webb observations, the exoplanet discoveries and the universal interest in extraterrestrial life and how it pertains to our origin are the reservoir of that public interest. The accomplishments of the International Space Station deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing nations together in a common extraterrestrial peaceful enterprise. This is the NASA we love and value, and it is the NASA you can bring back by pulling it out of the political morass and away from its industry masters, to serve America and, again, the world.

Louis Friedman is executive director emeritus and co-founder of the Planetary Society.

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