Jared Isaacman on NASA's Role in Enabling Private Industry for Supersonic and Space Exploration

NASA's Role in Supersonic Technology

• 🚀 NASA's Quest program is designed to derisk science and validate quiet supersonic technologies.
• 💡 The goal is to enable American industries, like Boom, to take the lead in building the commercial market for supersonic flight.
• 🎯 As administrator, Isaacman will focus on ensuring NASA enables new industries without creating unintentional regulatory or technical barriers.
• 🔑 NASA's job is to explore the near impossible and hand off mature capabilities to industry, where competition drives innovation and reduces costs.

Fostering Innovation and Competition

• 🧠 Isaacman believes NASA should focus on the "near impossible" that no one else is doing to attract top talent.
• ⚡ When NASA achieves breakthroughs, it should hand them off to industry and recalibrate to the next big bold endeavor.
• 🤝 This approach, similar to NASA's work in the 1970s and 80s with flyby wire and thrust vectoring, benefits both the talent workforce and NASA's mission.

The Second Space Race and Space Diplomacy

• ⚠️ The US is in a "second space race," with adversaries like China establishing a "space silk road" and increasing their cadence of space launches.
• 🛰️ China now has its own space station, presenting a challenge to American dominance in space.
• 🌍 NASA has historically served as a soft power, with many great endeavors worked on with allies.
• 📈 Isaacman emphasizes the urgency to examine NASA's successes and failures to clear obstacles and return to world-changing missions.
• 🤝 He believes that when countries have more choices for space collaboration, the US must ensure it remains the preferred partner.