Jared Isaacman: A New Era for NASA and American Space Exploration

Ignition sequence start. Roger, right? All engines up. It's good to have an aviator and astronaut in charge. Jared Eisenbeek. The new NASA administrator. NASA's still hot. Humankind will not be contained to planet Earth indefinitely. And the next giant leap capabilities, that's nuclear power and propulsion, that's what extends America's reach farther into the solar system. That's what guarantees the third race will never be in question. Please welcome Jared Isaacman. Good morning everyone. It is an absolute honor to be here at All In. We are living through an extraordinary moment in history, aren't we? It took just sixty five years from Orville and Wilbur's first flight to Neil and Buzz walking on the surface of the moon. Now it's been fifty seven years since Apollo eleven and for a while there, pace of progress hasn't been all that inspiring but look at what is on the horizon right now. We got artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, robotics, additive manufacturing, the promise of fusion energy, biotech to heal the disabled, autonomous transportation, this whole abundance thing everyone's talking about, all converging in the years ahead is beyond what most people can comprehend. Our world will fundamentally change. How we live, how we work, how we fight wars, how we reach out and touch the stars. But we are not alone on this journey, we are living through a great power competition. Other nations understand the opportunities that can elevate nations and change civilizations. And perhaps nowhere are the possibilities, the competition and the consequences of getting it wrong more apparent than in the ultimate high ground above us. Now at NASA, we are doing things differently and we are regaining our swagger and putting wins on the board. But absent this president, absent this geopolitical competition and the very real possibility of losing the second space race, I suspect very little would have changed. For too long, resources at the world's most accomplished space agency were spread everywhere trying to make everyone happy. Much of it was through external imposition but plenty of it was self inflicted. We partnered for the sake of partnerships, oftentimes becoming a drag on the mission instead of accelerating it. As a result, we have the Orion spacecraft that we can't inject into low lunar orbit like we did during Apollo. And the prior administration canceled the Mars sample return mission that was on track to cost more than an aircraft carrier. We created programs that were too big to fail, too costly to truly succeed in the hope that they would survive administrations. The results being a rocket that was designed when China was predominantly operating coal fired locomotives and now becoming operational as China operates 25,000 miles of high speed rail and is just a few years away from their own Apollo eleven like moment. Core competencies and tens of thousands of the NASA workforce were rented, outsourced, or lost which turned what should have been months worth of progress into years …