NASA Chief: How To Reach Another Star System | Jared Isaacman

You know, this is this is a federal academy to prepare the future leaders for this, again, increasingly important domain. Now, 10 percent of the graduates from the Air Force Academy go into the Space Force. So you think about that all our federal academies for these important domains and we get 10 percent of one of them to prepare the leaders for, again, this increasingly important domain for all the reasons I described before. So it's a four year degree program. Eventually, I'm sure it'll have postgrad programs and you can graduate from it.

Jared IsaacmanYou can come to NASA. It is NASA led. We expect the majority of graduates to come to NASA for a period of time. But you could also go into the Space Force. You go into the Air Force,

potentially. You can join other government agencies. On that, how do you attract top talent to NASA? And, you know, especially competing with the private sector, which is like private sector and space is bigger than it's ever been. What a great question. So I would tell you first, it is not hard for us to attract talent. You know, the NASA logo, the meatball, as we call it is pretty widely recognized around the world. The hard part is going to be retaining it because right now a substantial portion of what we do at NASA does in fact overlap with industry. And that's a dangerous place to be because you can graduate from school. You can be really excited. I'm going to NASA. I'm going to work on chemical propulsion rockets. And then you're there for four or five years and you're like, but there's companies that are doing this and they're landing their rockets on ships and I get stock options. So why do I want to stay at NASA? And that's why you can't have overlap with industry. NASA always has to recalibrate back to doing the near impossible.

Jared IsaacmanThat's why we're building nuclear powered spaceships, something no company, no other agency, no other nation is capable of doing but NASA. So that's how you recruit your talent,

but then you retain them because they're working on things they can't do anywhere else. Why do you think NASA has so much aura compared to like literally any other government agency? Like there's lots of other government agencies. sees that do cool things. But it seems like NASA is the only one that has like... You don't think the IRS does cool things? Or like Social Security? Yeah, they do some cool things, but you know, people don't get like merch with the Social Security logo on it. It's just NASA. And like, similarly, it's so... Like everything they do is so bipartisan. Like when the Artemis II launched, like I couldn't think of anything I've seen that was more like universally beloved.

Because we're going out to unlock the secrets of the universe. Yeah. I mean, our job is to answer the question, are we alone? I mean, what kid, you know, didn't at some point as like a child look up at the night sky and just imagine the possibilities? We have to do that for a living. I mean, that is so cool. So whether it's our humans going into space, our astronauts going to the moon or building a moon base or building nuclear spaceships or launching great telescopes of discovery to, again, try and unlock the secrets of the universe. We have the coolest job, really, on behalf of all the American people, but really the space-loving, curious dreamers all around the world.

It's awesome. It is, like, one of the most universal goals you can have, like, just as mankind. Did you want to be an astronaut? Yeah, totally. I was, like, obsessed with space when I was, like, four. I still do like this. So I was like, this is the only cool city, the only cool thing my city has. So I'm curious, what are your thoughts on Elon committing to the moon as a goal and refocusing from Mars? Well, first of all, I'm very appreciative that there is now almost complete alignment from the private sector, from the government, that we need to go to the moon. We've made promises for 36 years.

We've committed a lot of taxpayer resources. We must return to the moon. We need to do so to stay, build the base for a lot of reasons. And some of it is extremely important to companies like SpaceX that do want to unlock the economic potential. I mean, you know, Elon and SpaceX talked about mass drivers on the moon, you know, 3D printing satellites and shooting them off from the lunar surface. That's awesome. Like we want an orbital economy. We don't we will never have the future that probably a lot of us imagined as kids if it's only paid for by taxpayers.

Jared IsaacmanSo moon is a great proving ground for where we go next, which is Mars.

So I guarantee you SpaceX has not taken their eye off the prize, which is making life multiplanetary, which means you need to get to another planet. And that planet is Mars. But we'll certainly take a proving ground three days away from home to test out habitability, test out new spacesuits, mobility, power, all the things necessary to keep, you know, this fragile human body alive out in space. Let's test that out on the moon before we go to Mars. But Mars is always part of the, you know, it's always just one more step on the grand journey. Does NASA have any kind of plans at the moment, including sort of very abstract far future ones for like going to permanently like other solar systems?

So the first step on that journey is fission power. So like really in my like, I guess, simplistic view on it, for us to overcome the tyranny of distance in space, we need to continue to unlock more of the energy potential in matter. And chemical rockets, it's negligible. Now with fission power, we're unlocking like 0.5% of it, but that's a huge deal. I mean, that really helps us go farther into space without having to refuel. And we're going to get very good at that. And we've only done it once, 1965, but we're going to build a grand nuclear powered Starfleet, you know, and then next up is going to be fusion power. And then we're going to be able to unlock a little bit more of that potential of matter until eventually you get to like, which is something that my kids and my grandkids and future grandkids probably won't ever live to see which is something like uh any matter annihilation where now you're unlocking like the full potential of matter and that's what's gonna get you to the type of speeds that are gonna be necessary the velocities to go out and venture to uh you know to another star system but this is all going to happen at some point we just got to keep pressing on outward

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Lovable.dev. Now, onto the episode. Going back to my question earlier about like NASA having aura, you know, obviously space is really cool. Everybody loves space. Another area of technology that we're seeing a lot of right now is AI. And generally speaking, people kind of hate AI. They like they don't see the vision of the good future. The main emotion felt by most people, I think, is more fear of change. What do you think, like, developers of AI, proponents of AI can learn from NASA and others in space on, like, how to make the objective awesomeness of the technology, like, apparent to more people?

Well, I think there's storytelling. And like I said, you know, what we do at NASA is always a very good story, right? Unlock the secrets of the universe. Answer the questions. Are we alone? You know, put hero astronauts into space. Put them on the moon. Build a moon base. AI is going to play a role in a lot of that. You know, we talk about the potential of AI. Yes, there's this whole Doomer thing of where it sends us down a really poor path. There is the whole optimist side of this, which is it has the potential to elevate and transform civilizations, right? Now, the worst thing we can possibly do in all of it is to say, let's just stop and trust that our rivals in this great power competition are going to somehow wield this technology better than us.

So for better or worse, you're not putting the genie back in the bottle. If you don't like data centers in your backyard, fine, let's put them in space. You know, the physics is not broken there on that. There are certainly some economic challenges to make it viable, but do that. We'll put them in space. That's great. Orbital economy, good thing. But, you know, if you care, you know, about this potential, you know, from what this technology can yield, then you're going to want to continue investing in it.

Jared IsaacmanBecause, again, hitting the pause button on progress and hoping our rivals will somehow look favorably on us if they get to a superior capability is not a wise strategy.

How is NASA thinking about the orbital economy? We talk to founders all the time and sort of in the SF sphere about orbital compute. But how are you guys thinking about it on the NASA side? Yeah, I would just say, generally speaking, like I love this whole commercial space industry that's emerging right now. And there's a lot of areas that can help us. Generally, what we work on does not have a good, you know, business case to to support it. We should be doing the most wild, near impossible things to open up new frontiers. And along the way, if you can create, there's economic potential from your effort, fantastic.

Launch observation and communications, no question, real markets for it. NASA's one customer of many, thriving commercial industry we can benefit from. Well, launch companies can look to extensions of that and say, well, I'm already really good at launch. I'm already good at communications. Now I want to put compute on orbit. And I think being vertically integrated advantages them in that regard. And if it works out, fantastic. You know, we're not part of the Department of Commerce. We're not always trying to go out and enable these things, you know, enable, you know, economies around us. We want to, again, go and discover things, what might be in our own backyard in our solar system.

But along the way, if opening a new frontier, there's economic potential. Fantastic. We're putting lots of landers on the moon. I can't guarantee you can get more value out of the lunar regolith than all the cost of being there and refining it. But we'll put a demand signal out because we need to build a moon base. And if along the way, there's a lunar economy, fantastic. Yeah. I'm also curious, what are your timelines for lunar industrial base? It's actually not one of my objectives. I mean, meaning there are commercial companies out there right now trying to solve problems for us on the moon.

We put a demand signal out for landers on a near monthly basis, rovers, rovers that can take crew, that can be autonomous, that can do logistics or surface improvement. So I can put demand signals out there to help us do what we need to do on behalf of the American taxpayers. And if that turns into a, you know, a self-sustaining industry, fantastic. Like I want there to be lots of customers to be on the moon, but like we go there for specific reasons, to master the skills to go to Mars for its scientific potential, for national security reasons, for inspiration to the next generation. And if there's an economic benefit along the way, that's even better. Should we build a Dyson sphere or a Dyson swarm at some point? Well, I think that's part of, Elon's strategy for going to the moon and building a mass accelerator. Yes, I actually very much subscribe to a lot of Elon's views that the capability of a civilization, when you truly zoom out, is its potential to harness as much of the energy potential from your own star as possible.

So now, what form that ultimately takes? I mean, we're not necessarily doing the greatest job of even leveraging solar power as it exists today. But I do think that that is absolutely directionally correct. That should be the aspiration for all Earthlings is to make the greatest use of our star's energy potential. How long do you think it'll take? Some people say decades. Some people say centuries. Some people say millions of years. You know, there is a lot of smarter people than me that can make those kind of predictions. I'll tell you, we've taken long enough just simply getting back to the moon.

I mean, to such an extent that there's actually a lot of doubters out there on that. Like, I've heard it's like a third of the interested population. So step one for me, get astronauts back on the moon. Bring a lot of HD cameras this time. Like, we are going to leave no doubters behind. We're going to put orbital observation satellites. You are going to see the moon base get built in real time on a moon base website and get America underway and nuclear power in space. Like, those are my near-term priorities. The harnessing the sun thing, getting to a type two civilization, I'm going to leave for the other experts.

Yeah. One of my favorite parts of the Apple keynote this year was like they had footage of the Artemis mission shot on iPhone 17 Pro Max. It's like, wow, like the exact same camera that like we all have is like being used to take photos of like the actual moon, like the moon in space. Yeah, that was somewhat of a little bit of a personal agenda of mine. That was like one of my first executive orders coming into this role was we're putting iPhones with our Artemis II astronauts going around the moon. They're going to take pictures and videos just like any other normal human being would if they were right next to the moon with their phone.

And we're going to put them up on space station as well. And I think it was a hit. Yeah, I'm really curious on another front, if NASA is doing any research into how biological life sort of behaves in space. Are you guys still thinking about that and possible life sciences implications? Oh, for sure. I mean, the vast majority of the work that's done in the International Space Station. So for those that don't know, if you're 26 years old or younger, you have not lived at a time where we didn't have astronauts living continuously above you in low Earth orbit. The International Space Station is an incredible international collaboration.

It's an orbital laboratory and a lot of the work that they are doing up there. In fact, I mean, keeping human beings alive in that environment was probably one of our greatest, you know, accomplishments in space right now. But they're doing everything from crystal formulation for cancer treating drugs, you know, biotech. I mean, you know, like we're not we're not quite there at the 3D printing everyone a spare liver to keep in their their fridge. But a lot of the work they're doing is to take advantage of the unique environment of microgravity like that. And we'll continue to do so. I mean, we want to find some real silver bullets that make a meaningful impact on humanity that have to be manufactured in microgravity.

Also, why is nuclear power so important in space for propulsion or other use cases? Yeah, I mean, we talked before, like, it's very important to get NASA doing things that no one else is doing from a recruiting retention problem. Like if we, we already cracked the code. chemical propulsion. The more time and energy we spend doing that, the more disadvantaged we are because we don't have the stock options and you can go to other companies that are doing cool things. Nuclear power in space, it's very analogous to the nuclear submarine. I mean,

Jared Isaacmanyou can go really, really far. And when you get there, you have a lot of power to do amazing things. We're sending that nuclear powered octocopter to Saturn's moon of Titan to look

for complex chemistry. To maybe answer the question, are we even alone in our own solar system, it's a two kilowatt MMRTG that converts to 100 watts. So like an old light bulb. So that's what we're able to send far out into the solar system, because once you get about to like Jupiter distance, solar effectiveness is like near zero. It's just like a flashlight and the beam just keeps going farther and farther out to the side. So you see very little when you finally get there. So nuclear power, again, helps us overcome some of the tyranny of distance in our solar system. Yeah. Why is it important for NASA to exist at all? And, you know, we spend like 24 billion a year on NASA. Nowhere near like peak government spending on NASA in the 60s, but still some would say like just let the private sector do it. Oh, I mean, think about all the things that we set out and do and what benefit we get back here on Earth for it. Like nobody could have possibly imagined during the Apollo era, right, when we put Neil and Buzz on the moon, all of the downstream benefits. Again, we have weather satellites to predict the weather, to prepare for natural disasters, to see a forest fire somewhere. I mean, the damage is billions every

time you have out-of-control wildfires, not to mention the loss of life, and we can see that. And now we're actually queuing up drones to go and fight the fire before anyone even really knows it exists because we can see the heat blooms from space. You're connecting the disconnected through things like Starlink, which again does, I think, solve a lot of the world's problems. There are a lot of downstream benefits, not to mention the national security implications that protect our nation and people from space. Now apply that to the present day. What are we doing? We're going to the moon, we're building a moon base. All of the technology that's going to be required to do that has benefit back here on Earth. It has its scientific potential, unlocking the secrets of the universe, but then inspiring the next generation. You both said you wanted to be an astronaut as a kid right now. How many more kids are going to dress up as astronauts for Halloween this year because of the Artemis II mission? How many more will do it when you see NASA astronauts back on the moon again? There is always some price worth paying. And frankly, the price we are paying is really, really small in comparison to all the benefit we get back here on Earth.

Totally. How do you guys think about prioritizing the narrative? Like the space race is way less talked about these days than the AI race. Yeah. Right. So how do you guys think about that? Well, it's very real for starters. The issue is it's not the 1960s anymore. We have more than three television channels. So like tuning in to the space race is kind of hard when there's all the other kind of problems and opportunities that exist in the world. I mean, the daily discourse is dominated by so many topics that, you know, we're in a completely different news cycle every couple of hours. So it's hard for people to fully lock in.

But let me tell you, there is a space race right now. China will do what the Soviets never could during the first space race. And in 2029, you will see Chinese astronauts on the moon. And I think that has serious implications. I mean, that sends a message to the world. You know, whose technology should I be buying? You know, whose military security guarantee should I trust? Whose standards should I conform to? Right. I mean, you know, America, you know, America and NASA is responsible for the peaceful exploration of space. Apollo 11's plaque said we came in peace for all mankind. Right. We said a standard out there.

It is a beacon of light. And I think if we come up short in the space race, the implications are probably beyond what we can really imagine at this point. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to wrap. Jared Isaacman, thank you so much for joining us on MTS. Thanks so much. Absolutely. a huge thanks to mts sponsors 11 labs ai that communicates at human level across every channel and modality 11 labs.io slash mts scale your startup on neon millions of developers and startups have already chosen neon for their Start on the free plan or get up to $100,000 in credits for your startup at neon.com slash MTS.

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