Trump's Nasa pick Jared Isaacman grilled in senate over ties with Space X's Elon Musk

Jared Isaacman , a private astronaut and founder of Shift4 payments , appeared before the US senate commerce, science and transportation committee as part of his confirmation hearing to lead Nasa . The committee, especially senator Edward Markey, raised concerns about Isaacman’s close ties with Space X CEO Elon Musk .

Markey repeatedly asked whether Musk was present at Mar-a-Lago when president Donald Trump offered Isaacman the Nasa post. Isaacman declined to answer directly, only saying that he had spoken with Trump. He also said he had not spoken to Musk since being nominated.


However, Isaacman’s connections to SpaceX run deep. He has flown on two SpaceX missions, funded research and development under the company’s Polaris programme, and publicly praised its operations.

In a 2023 interview, Isaacman described SpaceX as one of the greatest American success stories. “If you can disassociate Elon with it and his personality and the controversy associated with it, SpaceX is one of the greatest American success stories,” Isaacman told Bloomberg News in November, prior to his nomination.

Isaacman first partnered with SpaceX after taking Shift4 public in 2020. Shortly after, he bought an entire SpaceX flight — the Inspiration4 mission — making history with the first all-civilian orbital flight. He later funded the Polaris programme, which includes three missions. He even performed the first commercial spacewalk during one of these flights.

His financial involvement has been significant. In 2021, Shift4 invested $27.5 million in SpaceX, and Isaacman personally committed to future missions — including one on the starship rocket, which is designed to reach the Moon and Mars.

Garrett Reisman, a former Nasa astronaut and SpaceX director had said about Isaacman, “He’s a huge fan of how SpaceX goes about doing their business, and the quality of the engineering, how fast they move, how fearless they are."

“He’s not at all a fan of the traditional aerospace mentality, which is going slow, doing an abundance of analysis and delaying hardware testing,” Reisman said.