Imagine dedicating your entire life to studying, achieving top grades, skipping social events, and finally becoming an astronaut, only to be appointed as NASA's top chief. Your big moment arrives when the President honors you for sending astronauts around the moon at the White House. However, when a reporter asks about relocating NASA headquarters, the question is deflected to you. As you begin to answer, your physical appearance becomes the subject of cheap jokes.
This is exactly what happened to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. President Donald Trump avoided the question and instead told the world, 'The best man to tell you that is the man sitting right over here. You heard that question with those beautiful ears of yours? He's got great hearing, you know. He's got super hearing,' prompting laughter in the Oval Office.
Isaacman responded with a quick retort: 'Trick of the trade, sir.' One commentator noted, 'He probably handled that as deftly as one could hope.' However, it appeared that the tension quickly dissipated. Trump added, 'I'm very proud of these people. They have unbelievable courage, unbelievable, a lot of other things too, by the way. To get in there, you have to be very smart, have to do a lot of things physically good. So I would have had no trouble making it! I'm physically very, very good, maybe a little bit of a problem.' Turning to Isaacman, he asked, 'We'll have to try it sometimes. Is a president allowed to go up in one of these missions?' Isaacman replied, 'We can get working on that, sir! If we can put up more rockets, there are more opportunities.'
Who is Jared Isaacman?
Isaacman is an American billionaire, private astronaut, and tech entrepreneur who became NASA chief in December. He commanded Inspiration4, the first all-civilian spaceflight launched on September 16, 2021. He later led Polaris Dawn, during which he became the first private citizen to perform a spacewalk.
Isaacman's primary responsibility now is advocating for NASA's budget and defending Trump's cuts to the agency after winning his nomination. Critics are skeptical of his ties to SpaceX and Elon Musk, fearing that NASA might prioritize a Mars landing driven by SpaceX's ambitions over its own. These concerns intensified after Musk called for decommissioning the International Space Station.
Isaacman retains a strong passion for Pluto. At the end of a recent hearing, Republican Senator Jerry Moran asked the NASA administrator his thoughts on Pluto, noting that astronomer Clyde Tombaugh hailed from Moran's home state of Kansas. 'Senator, I am very much in the camp of 'make Pluto a planet again,'' Isaacman replied. 'And I would say, we are doing some papers right now on, I think, a position that we would love to escalate through the scientific community to revisit this discussion and ensure that Clyde Tombaugh gets the credit he received once and rightfully deserves to receive again,' the NASA chief added.
