In 2024, Jared Isaacman became the first non-professional astronaut to walk in space. Within months, the daring payments billionaire – a close ally of Elon Musk – leapt closer to another personal goal by becoming Donald Trump’s top pick to head US space agency NASA. He was briefly out of favour when Trump and Musk fell out, but the stars have realigned for Isaacman. Trump has renominated Isaacman, saying he’s the ideal candidate to drive the agency’s “mission of discovery and inspiration”.
Within NASA, there are hopes that the appointment will draw a line under “weeks of drama” over who will lead the agency, says Bloomberg. Isaacman, 42 – who founded his company Shift4 at just 16 – is a political neophyte. But Trump highlighted his business achievements; and there’s no doubting his passion for extraterrestrial travel and derring-do, says Time. A former stunt pilot, he bankrolled last year’s three-day Polaris Dawn space mission, reportedly paying $200 million to Musk for all four seats aboard the SpaceX craft. Isaacman has tied himself closely to SpaceX since 2021, says Bloomberg, spending undisclosed sums on multiple missions and helping fund research and development. “A staunch supporter of the commercial space industry,” he’s expected to increase NASA’s use of private companies if confirmed for the top job. Conflict of interest is a worry.
“Dropping out of high school isn’t usually a good idea, but it sure paid off for one New Jersey kid,” noted a 2011 profile in Business Jet Traveler charting Isaacman’s meteoric rise. His parents, who earned a precarious living, worried when the self-described “horrible student” quit school, but Isaacman already had a business plan. During school holidays, he’d done IT work for Merchant Services Inc – “early e-commerce stuff” – and got a feel for the credit-card industry where he saw “a lot of opportunity for improvement”. In 1999, he founded United Bank Card from his parents’ basement: “Assets were limited to $10,000 in stock certificates that he’d received from his grandfather.”
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The young firm flourished. Isaacman’s father, Don, who joined as a salesman, later said “he was within a year of losing his house” when the company (rebranded Shift4 in 2017) started, crediting his offspring with “saving the family”. There was no silver bullet, says Isaacman: no “one technology or patent”. He simply focused on streamlining the then labyrinthine business of processing credit cards, moving quickly into new technologies and often offering customers (typically restaurants and shops) free kit in order to win their accounts. Within a few years, the firm made Inc magazine’s annual list of America’s fastest-growing small businesses and Isaacman was runner-up to Mark Zuckerberg in the list of “30 top entrepreneurs under 30”. By 2011, he was running one of the US’s largest payment processors.
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Can Jared Isaacman lead NASA?
Success gave Isaacman free rein to indulge his passion for flying. An avid collector of vintage planes, he became an aerobatics whizz, performing at air-shows. In 2009, says Fortune, he “set a world record for circumnavigating the globe”. Isaacman parlayed his love of aviation into a business, founding Draken International, a defence firm specialising in military aircraft and training pilots. In 2019, he sold a majority stake to Blackstone, launching himself into billionaire status. Isaacman is “a thrill seeker”, says Forbes. But that’s partly “to unwind from the non-stop… 80-plus-hour weeks” he works. NASA's staff can expect an intense regime of slashed meetings, cost-cutting and liberation from “inefficiencies”. Isaacman has said he wants to “foster a culture of urgent execution” in his quest to kick-start America’s new space age. “NASA’s Game of Thrones is finally over,” observed Politico. There’s quite a firebrand in the hotseat.
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