This is Jared Isaacman, the next head of NASA appointed by Trump: a billionaire space fan who left school at 16 years old

“I am delighted to nominate Jared Isaacman, a prominent business leader, philanthropist, pilot and astronaut, as administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network. “Jared will pave the way for groundbreaking achievements in space science, technology and exploration,” he added.

Isaacman, 41, from Pennsylvania, is one of those men who respond to the ‘self-made’ myth. He dropped out of high school at age 16 to start his own payment processing company in the basement of his parents’ home in Far Hills. “I was a horrible student and I wasn’t happy at school,” he admitted in the Netflix documentary series. Apparently, the idea came to him when he was just 15 years old when he was working for a local firm, where he learned how companies set up credit card readers. Self-taught, he spent hours behind his computer keyboard and barely slept, until his company took shape. Today, Shift4 manages more than $260 billion annually and has more than 200,000 clients in the United States, Canada, Japan and Europe. Isaacman took Shift4 public in 2020, achieving a net worth valued at $2.3 billion, according to Forbes.

Additionally, Isaacman founded Draken International in 2011, a defense company that trains pilots for the United States Air Force and which he sold eight years later. He himself is capable of piloting military aircraft, has participated in air shows and has set a world record for flying around the world. But his great whim is space and he is willing to pay for it.

The businessman helped finance SpaceX’s private Inspiration4 mission, launched aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft in September 2021 with the first all-civilian crew. In addition to Isaacman, a young survivor of childhood bone cancer, a philanthropist and former U.S. Air Force veteran who served in Iraq, and a science teacher who had narrowly missed the chance to become an astronaut spent four days in space. from NASA.

Isaacman also helped finance Polaris Down, a SpaceX mission aimed at testing new technologies to travel to Mars and its most risky adventure. During the orbital flight, Isaacman became the first civilian to perform a ‘space walk’: he spent about ten minutes with half of his body outside the hatch, which he did not leave at any time, while his companions -Sarah Gillis, an employee of SpaceX, would follow as later – they controlled their activities from inside the ship. Polaris Down also achieved another record: on the second day of flight, it reached 1,400 km altitude, the furthest any human being has gone since NASA’s Apollo program more than 50 years ago.

The collaboration with SpaceX includes two more Polaris missions, including what would be the first crewed flight of Starship, the new giant rocket currently being developed by SpaceX. The financial arrangements of this partnership are confidential, but Isaacman is believed to have invested $200 million of his personal fortune in Inspiration4.

Isaacman’s choice is controversial, since it could precisely represent a conflict of interest due to his close relationship with Musk, who will be part of the Trump administration when he takes office on January 20. He will replace the current administrator, Bill Nelson, a former Democratic senator from Florida who also traveled to orbit on a space shuttle mission in 1986. This afternoon, Nelson will appear before the media to discuss the development of the Artemis program to send astronauts from NASA to the Moon.

The next NASA administrator will have to decide on key issues for the future of the space race, especially the future of Artemis. The agency hopes that the Artemis III crew will set foot on our satellite by the end of 2026, but the components necessary to achieve this, including the lunar lander being developed by SpaceX, are delayed. In this sense, the Trump government’s decisions could represent a change in NASA’s plans, leaving Artemis in the background and focusing on Mars.

“With the support of President Trump (…) we will never again lose our ability to travel to the stars and we will never settle for second place,” Isaacman said in a post on Musk’s X social network. “Americans will walk on the Moon and Mars and, by doing so, we will improve life here on Earth,” he said.