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All-In · 3 min · Jun 4, 2025

NASA should take on nuclear spacecraft that companies won't

Jared Isaacman's agenda shifts NASA away from work businesses can do and toward the Moon, Mars and nuclear electric propulsion. He argues nuclear spacecraft deserve a major program, not a lab-scale effort.

Jared Isaacman

Jared Isaacman is founder of Shift4, pilot and commercial astronaut.

Commanded Inspiration4, the first all-civilian orbital flight, and founded Shift4 payments; now runs NASA.

  • David Friedberg, Host · CEO, Ohalo

    Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.

About this segment

Jared Isaacman's agenda shifts NASA away from work businesses can do and toward the Moon, Mars and nuclear electric propulsion. He argues nuclear spacecraft deserve a major program, not a lab-scale effort.

From “Jared Isaacman: What went wrong at NASA | The All-In Interview”, Jun 4, 2025. Watch the full episode

“pivot from competing with industry to doing what no company would ever do which is build nuclear spaceships”
Jared Isaacmanat 22:07 · All-In22:07

Takeaways

  1. NASA should focus on work commercial firms are unlikely to do.
  2. His priorities include lunar return, Mars capability and nuclear propulsion.
  3. He says nuclear spacecraft merit a billion-dollar initiative.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 23:04NASA’s bureaucracy pushes ownership away from the people doing the work6:46
  2. 33:42Isaacman favors many small science missions over flagships5:33
  3. 48:19Isaacman says resistance to DOGE may explain his withdrawal6:46

  4. 20:32NASA should take on nuclear spacecraft that companies won't2:43

  5. 9:26An investment inquiry turned into Inspiration4 within weeks3:14Up next
  6. 43:49NASA should take on the work private space firms cannot3:23
  7. 14:04Polaris Dawn was designed to test new capabilities2:46

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 20:45

    Who coached you on your one pager and what did it say? nobody coached me on it it was uh it was just i generally you know i've had an opportunity to obviously interact with nasa over the last i mean my my commercial space career now goes on uh well it'll be it'll be five years in a in a couple months from when it began and you know during polaris dawn when we were doing suit development spent a lot of time at nasa using their chambers and facilities had a lot of you know kind of firsthand experience certainly kennedy space center so i had a good starting place and uh i think it really just centered on looking in in In this kind of environment, budgets aren't getting bigger.

  2. 21:20

    We do have to do more with less. The agency is doing a lot of littles, a lot of things that other agencies, departments, companies are capable of doing. That's not why the taxpayers fund NASA. Like NASA is funded to do the near impossible that no one else can do. Not things that, you know, companies should be doing for their own competitiveness. You know, NASA helps fund like engine efficiency programs for, you know, commercial jet engine providers.

  3. 21:45

    It's like, don't they need to do that themselves or else they lose to their competitors? Like, why are we funniest? So basically, like, an idea to kind of go in, stop a lot of the littles that are not needle movers, that are not why the agency exists, and concentrate on the needle movers. So, you know, that's leading in the high ground of space. Let's get, let's, you know, let's complete our lunar obligations because that's a whole other story with China.

  4. 22:08

    at the same time parallel the the you know parallel the capabilities to get to mars help commercial industry uh develop the the rapid reusable heavy lift capability that allows us to go anywhere pivot from competing with industry to doing what no company would ever do which is build nuclear spaceships there's a lot of advantages to it nuclear electric propulsion for sure you know we don't have to worry as much about refilling it's hyper efficient transport of mass. It opens up, you know, beyond Mars. And frankly, like, look, it takes the pressure off in situ resource manufacturing. And if you are going to do in situ resource manufacturing, you're going to need nuclear power. And the farther we get away from the sun, the less reliant we are on solar. A lot of reasons why that should not be a small program in the lab

  5. 22:51

    right now doing light bulbs, but should be a billion dollar initiative. You know, figuring out the space economy and increasing the rate of world changing discovery. Those have been my priorities uh it's what i told brief the president it's what i went through the senate and the