The New Head of NASA Had an Interesting Disagreement with the Space Agency

Earlier this week, President-elect Donald Trump named billionaire tech founder — and SpaceX space tourist — Jared Isaacman as the next head of NASA.

Isaacman has been to space twice on board the Elon Musk-led company's Crew Dragon spacecraft, most recently becoming the first private citizen to go on a spacewalk.

However, his relationship with NASA is far more nuanced. The entrepreneur and trained fighter jet pilot has offered to embark on a mission to visit the space agency's groundbreaking Hubble Space Telescope to repair it — a plan that didn't sit right with officials at the agency, which ultimately decided against the mission.

In June, NASA astrophysics director Mark Clampin announced that such a plan would potentially end up doing far more harm than good.

While NASA "greatly appreciates" SpaceX's efforts, he told reporters at the time, "our assessment also raised a number of considerations, including potential risks such as premature loss of science and some technology challenges."

Isaacman, however, maintains that time is quickly running out. That's in large part due to one of Hubble's remaining gyroscopes, which help point it in the right direction, experiencing ongoing issues.

"With Hubble orbit decaying there is only a limited time to plan, train and fly a mission," he tweeted back in January, "I am a bit concerned that the 'clock' is being run out on this game."

The risks involved in what Isaacman is proposing, which includes visiting the aging space telescope on board a Crew Dragon spacecraft, are substantial.

Even its Space Shuttle, which was used to service the Hubble five times between 1993 and 2009, came eerily close to permanently damaging the space telescope, as NPR reported in May.

Worse yet, Dragon doesn't have an airlock or a robotic arm like the Space Shuttle, complicating matters further.

However, as Isaacman demonstrated himself earlier this year, venturing outside of a Crew Dragon capsule with the help of an umbilical tether is indeed possible.

In other words, if Isaacman is approved to be the new head of NASA, he'll become the boss of people like Clampin who previously shot down his plan.

It'll be interesting to watch those dynamics. For now, it's worth nothing that Isaacman was gracious about the dispute.

"On surface it looks like 'billionaire wants to touch Hubble and NASA said hell no,' but that is not what happened," Isaacman tweeted in May in an apparent attempt to clear the air.

"I know a lot of people have memories of the heroic shuttle missions to save Hubble... the long EVAs, Canadarm and the giant gyros. The astronauts did an incredible job keeping Hubble going, but that was then and this is now," he added at the time.

"You can pack a lot of capabilities into something the size of an iPhone these days," he wrote. "This was not lost on any of the scientists and engineers that worked on the joint study."

Isaacman took a refreshingly level-headed position on the matter, arguing that "I acknowledge this is not my telescope to touch and a lot of time has passed from the study till now."

"Government priorities change, budgets become tight, regardless of who is funding the mission, it does require contributions of resources from a lot of parties to ensure success," he argued. "Regardless of what happens from here, I am glad we all, inclusive of NASA, invested the time to see if this could work. Hubble deserved that effort."Trump Names Billionaire Space Tourist as Head of NASA

Now that Isaacman is in control, could SpaceX soon launch a last-ditch effort to prolong the life of one of the largest and most versatile research tools ever sent into space?

As NASA administrator, Isaacman will likely have far more influence over the matter — but whether Congress will back any attempts to secure funding for such a mission remains to be seen.

Besides, now that he's been subjugated to a desk job in Washington, DC, his chances of visiting Hubble on his own dime may have just slimmed considerably.

What's more likely is an even more concentrated effort to make progress toward Musk and Trump's goal of sending humans to Mars — something that Isaacman is entirely on board with.

"It’s doing things that either have never been done before or haven’t been done in over 50 years, and the idea is to build upon these things," Isaacman said during a 2022 event. "So we continue to open up space for others to get back to the moon and get to Mars and beyond."

"When we get back to the moon and we get to Mars someday, it won’t be just, you know, two people at a time," he added at the time. "You envision a potential colony on Mars at some point, a permanent presence on the Moon."

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