Ep 259 | The Billionaire Astronaut Who ALMOST Led NASA | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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I want you to meet somebody who I think is the ultimate embodiment of the American dream.

I mean, you know, the biggest version of the American Dream.

He is a widely, wildly successful businessman, started a billion-dollar company out of his parents' basement when he was 16,

never been in the military, yet he owns and flies his own fighter jets and is helping

Top Gun

teach the current fighters how to fight.

In his spare time, he's also an astronaut.

Last September, he became the first civilian in history to perform a spacewalk.

When President Trump nominated him to be the the new head of NASA, he seemed like the ideal outsider choice and would soar to confirmation.

But then he ran into a firestorm of turbulence that he's not really used to navigating DC politics.

We'll get the story behind that and much more from the entrepreneur, the philanthropist, the pilot, the astronaut, Jared Isaacman.

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I am so excited to talk to you.

I've talked to a few astronauts.

One of them was, I walked away really depressed, was Buzz Aldrin.

Do you know Buzz?

Sure.

Yeah.

And

he was, he, I came away a little depressed because

that was the pinnacle.

And I can't imagine

anything being bigger than going to the moon and walking on the moon and then coming back and then having, never having the opportunity to go back and everything else.

I mean, how do you top, that's what I talked to him about.

How do you top that?

How do you, you're out in space, you did the first spacewalk as a regular citizen.

How do you top that?

Well, you're bringing up a fantastic point.

It's one that, you know, there's, there's a lot of, I mean, the astronaut images comes with, it's very glamorous, but there's a lot of, there are a lot of things that aren't often talked about, one of which is astronauts, when they come back from their missions, they go from an incredible high to an ultra low.

The only thing that kind of, I think, brings them back up again is what's the next mission?

And some go back to to space and some go on the speaking tour and try and share their experiences with others.

But I never expected at all when I came back from my first mission and you start deleting all the standing calendars for, you know, all the coordination leading up to the launch and everything that went through in quarantine.

You're like, how do you ever top something like this?

What an experience.

You know, I was fortunate that, you know, the mission continued on and wound up working on a developmental program that ultimately led to that spacewalk.

But yeah,

let's start at the first, because you were the commander, if I'm not mistaken, of the first SpaceX all-civilian crew.

Right, it was the first time any non-government astronauts went into orbit.

That was called Inspiration 4, and it was pretty incredible.

SpaceX committed to that mission before NASA even resumed operational flights from the United States.

So this was in November of 2020 before NASA's Crew-1 even launched.

So, I mean, talk about a bold leap for an organization like SpaceX to say: say, not only are we solving a decade-long horrific problem for NASA to get back

in the human spaceflight business, we're ready to do it with civilians.

And nine months later,

we went to space.

Did it occur?

I mean, it's not uncommon for things to blow up, especially as a first.

Did that play a role in anything as you were sitting there and you're about ready to light

a nuclear weapon underneath you, a giant bomb.

Did that even come to mind?

You know,

I've been flying for a really long time now, actually about 20 years.

I've gotten to fly with some of the literally the greatest fighter pilots in this country, one of which is Dale Snort Snodgrass.

He's since actually passed in a crash, but he was probably my greatest flying mentor ever.

And when he put us in really challenging situations, it was always like, you just got to hack it.

And I remember as that countdown countdown clock was going down the last 10 seconds, it was like,

we got to hack this thing.

We just got to, we got to tough through it because we are about to go on the ride of our lifetime.

And if this door opens and it's successful, think of all the exciting missions to follow.

You were in kindergarten when you first wanted to go to space camp.

Yes.

Yes.

So

first of all, who inspired you?

So I think it was actually television.

My parents put me in front of the TV instead of a babysitter a lot.

So I watched the movie Space Camp, Top Top Gun, the right stuff.

And I mean, I remember even saying, like, I want to go to space camp because there's a robot there that's going to launch me into space.

And in kindergarten, I just would check out from the library at the school picture books of the space shuttle.

And I did tell my kindergarten teacher, I was like, someday I'm going to do this.

So your understanding as a kid.

Compare what you thought space was going to be like, just launching.

What is it actually like?

So the actual actual ascent is not as

it's an intense experience, but it's not like what you would think, like you know, coming up to a traffic light and then just jamming the accelerator and getting thrown back in your seat.

You get that flying fighter jets for sure.

The actual acceleration is rather gradual because, you know, when you're on the pad, your thrust-to-weight ratio is barely greater than one to one.

So, if you're not looking at the screens and the displays, you hardly even know you're moving.

Now, the intensity starts to set in as you hear the turbo pumps around you, and you know, you've got that 1.8 million pounds of thrust that's accelerating you to 17,500 miles an hour, but it's not that instantaneous bam like you would think.

And then when you get into space, the big thing is that you could never prepare for here on Earth is just everybody feels differently.

And the spectrum there is from feeling,

you know, really unwell but functional for about three to five days to like the worst motion sickness you can imagine.

And it's existed like that since the beginning of the space program.

I think that's where I would probably be.

I've always wanted to go, I would go to space in a heartbeat, but I'd be barfing the whole time.

I'm convinced of it.

You know what?

They've figured out how to treat it really well.

And before you know it, you're back in the action and it's worth it.

Gosh, what is so what is it like when you slip the envelope

of Earth?

The first thing is that you do just feel differently and it's instantaneous.

The moment the engine cuts off on the second stage and you're at Seiko, you feel

second engine cutoff.

So that's when you know you have arrived and you've got your zero-G indicator floating.

So you know, okay, I'm in microgravity, but you feel different.

You feel like you're hanging upside down from your bed and it's going to last for a couple days.

And then you see the intense light coming off of Earth and the Sun, and you get a view that very few others have seen.

And it just gives you a new appreciation for kind of how small we are in the grand scheme of things.

I mean, you didn't have the experience Gail King had.

She did something very, very important, of course.

But

I can't imagine.

Now, you went out further than anybody had gone since the Apollo project, right?

That's your second mission.

My second mission.

So we had three big objectives on that one over five days.

First, we did go farther into space than anyone's gone since Apollo 17.

And two of my crewmates, Sarah Gillis and Anna Mennon, are the women who've traveled farthest from Earth ever, which I think is pretty cool and long overdue.

And

we did that to go inside the inner portion of the Van Allen radiation belt.

And it's a...

No, no, no.

I've heard.

I've heard you cannot cross that belt and then come back alive.

Well, I can assure you you can.

There is a lot of, and

as Buzz Aldrin could certainly attest to as well,

there's a lot more radiation there.

The idea is you want to be going as fast as you can when you go through it.

And if you're on a TLI to the moon, you're going 25,000 miles per hour.

So you're getting through it very quick, but you're getting some radiation.

We certainly saw it.

Lots of lights and alarms went off when we were in the kind of peak intensity.

I could actually, when you close your eyes, some astronauts have seen this phenomenon, we did as well, these light flashes, where it literally looks like with your eyes closed, a meteor shower in your eyes from the radiation.

Wow.

But you can

live through it.

With you.

Well, for us, it was at this peak radiation intensity period over the South Atlantic anomaly, just off of Brazil.

And basically, I would say in about three orbits,

it was that particular phase was the equivalency of being on the space station for three months from a radiation dosage.

So

you're up, you start heading back,

and now you re-enter.

What is that like?

So this is a little different.

So on the ascent, the uphill,

I've been up twice.

I've looked at my crew members.

Everyone's always smiling and cheering.

There is just so much excitement to finally get the mission underway, and you have all these outs if something goes wrong.

But on the way back, it's the high blood pressure moment.

You have no outs.

The heat shield must work.

There's no plan B, and the chutes must work.

And when you go really high past the space station where we were, there's lots of micrometeoroid orbital debris.

And even like a paint spec, like even a millimeter of aluminum can take a chunk out of a heat shield.

And then you wind up in a, you know, a potentially like a Columbia situation all over.

So re-entry is kind of high blood pressure because it has to work.

The Gs last longer.

Your body's deconditioned.

So it's,

I mean, it's a thrill for sure, but

that's where you're a little more nervous.

I don't think wetting my pants is, I would describe that as a thrill.

You, some people say

that because you're a billionaire, you bought your way into the program.

How do you respond to that?

Well, I'd say that like,

one,

I think the private investments that are going into advancing America's human spaceflight capabilities is a great thing for taxpayers, right?

I mean, what I think we did in the 1960s, where everybody contributed to such an enormous feat, is a good thing.

If you have private individuals, like you're seeing with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and my kind of modest contributions to it to advance a capability for the benefit of all humankind,

that's a good thing.

And it's not unprecedented.

You're a history buff.

I mean, throughout human history, you've had major expeditions and endeavors that have been privately funded for the benefit of many.

We used to have privately funded telescopes that then universities could take advantage of.

So I don't see it as a negative if it's kind of advancing the ball forward.

Yeah.

We're going to get into you heading NASA or being nominated to head NASA at some point.

But

I mean, I think NASA seems to be kind of a

government tends to be a mess in a lot of ways.

When I first heard Elon Musk talk about his,

when he started SpaceX, and he's like, okay, so what are the, you know, what are the parameters here?

You know, what kind of costs are you looking for, et cetera, et cetera?

And they're like,

no budget.

He found that so odd that, what do you mean, what do you mean?

You're running this and you don't,

money doesn't matter.

That doesn't make sense.

I think there's something to be said for private industry where there are budgets that you you do have to perform.

It makes a difference.

I couldn't agree more.

And I'll tell you something else about that Elon story.

And Eric Berger wrote two great, you know, kind of books about the early days of SpaceX.

What was most disheartening to Elon that set him on this path is he went on NASA's website to just learn about Mars.

You know, he just sold one of his first business and he's like, I'm interested in seeing what the grand American plan is to go to Mars.

And he's like, I went all over NASA's website.

I couldn't find anything about it.

And he's like, that doesn't make sense.

I mean,

how are we not having that somewhere on the roadmap?

But in terms of like, you know, some of the expertise that kind of corporate industry can bring, one, we're much better capital allocators.

It's just kind of the nature of the beast when you're beholden to shareholders and investors over the years that expect that

if you're going to take money, you're going to create lots and lots of value of it.

And someone like Elon, who started a number of successful companies or Jeff Bezos, I've run two companies now.

One's a public company.

I think you develop a skill set that's just not inherent in government where the check's always going to come and the expectation is there's always going to be more of it.

And I think in the end, you wind up creating a bureaucracy that serves

anything other than the mission.

But there is a world for a NASA, of course.

The government and every taxpayer should be contributing to do the near impossible, what no one else is capable of doing, what no private company is going to do or organization is capable of doing.

What are those things?

If you have Elon Musk saying, I'm going to go to Mars, I'm going to build a colony on Mars.

What are those things that private industry can't do?

Oh, well, I mean, first, there's the whole science portfolio inside of NASA.

I mean, there is, you know, as much as I personally and I would have tried to champion this to see academic institutions and, you know, nonprofits and private individuals fund scientific missions, it hasn't happened yet.

Like, if we're going to want rovers on Mars or send missions like Europa Clipper or Dragonfly, you know, to go explore within our solar system and beyond,

it's probably going to be a government-run operation because

there's no obvious economic model or financial return why someone else would do it.

And then in terms of what SpaceX is doing, which is just extraordinary, it's one piece of the puzzle.

They can't solve

every single problem.

For example, I think nuclear power is going to play a huge role in exploring our solar system and very relevant to Mars.

I mean, nuclear propulsion takes a lot of the pressure off commercial industry because you don't necessarily have to do lots of in-space refueling.

You're going to need nuclear reactors on the surface of Mars.

And simply put, the farther you get away from the sun, the less you can rely upon solar power.

Who's going to invest in nuclear-powered spacecrafts other than the government?

Like, there's no economic model for it.

You're not going to raise investment funds for it.

So there are things that NASA should be doing to help

the Blue Origins and the SpaceX of the world.

Let me go back again.

How did you grow up?

You weren't wealthy growing up.

Middle-class family.

My father's an alarm salesman.

My mother took care of me and my brothers and sisters.

So how did you get to this position?

I got incredibly lucky.

I think part of it is I was kind of either the accident or the surprise, however you look at it.

My brothers and sisters much older than me, and they were out enjoying life and living a very independent life while I was in high school.

And I was like, well,

I don't want to raise my hand to go to the bathroom.

I want to live my own life.

So he was somehow able to convince my parents at 16 to let me leave.

High school.

Leave high school.

I did get it.

They stop, stop, stop.

Yeah.

That seems insane.

I totally agree.

I have two daughters.

I'd never let them do it.

Right.

How did you convince your parents to do it?

I think I was just such a bad student.

They thought this was

the better alternative.

But they put conditions, get your GED, make a commitment to go to college, which I did.

And I did see opportunity.

I learned a lot about a payments industry in 1999, which is nowhere near exciting as space or aviation or some of my other endeavors, but I loved it.

And I figured out, you know, along with a good team, how to do it a little bit better.

So is this like Stripe, what you've done in the middle of the day?

Totally.

You know what?

So a lot of the names everyone knows are like Stripe, for example.

They're either in e-commerce, like kind of the sexier forms of payments.

We're behind the scenes in half the Las Vegas Strip, a third of the restaurants in the country.

Most of the sports stadiums you go to, theme parks, every theme parks are customer.

So it was like a small basement startup, and now it's about a $10 billion company on the U.S.

Stock Exchange.

And you started at 16.

I did.

And

in any case, it was

certainly a grand endeavor and

allowed me to be able to pursue other opportunities that I enjoy.

I created a defense company in 2011 that was probably the second coolest industry next to going into space.

We flew fighter jets as professional bad guys for the department.

Hang on just a second.

Before you get there, I just,

my dad never had a new car ever in his whole life.

And

one of the best moments of my life was being able to ask my dad,

what kind of car do you like?

Oh,

and buying the car for him.

What was it like having you offering your dad a job to come work for you?

It's funny,

I did the same thing for my dad.

And working with my father was probably one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

He just, I mean, my parents were very supportive when we were in the basement and trying to get going.

But I think my father saw some momentum and he also saw some limitations.

Like people don't, I had to hide in the basement.

Like I was 16.

I mean, I didn't shave for weeks.

It did nothing.

Like

he's a great salesperson.

He's taught me a lot about sales and diplomacy.

And he was like, he saw the opportunity and he came on board and he was the man in the field.

Yeah,

nobody's going to say, oh, let me give you our payment

systems over to you.

So

it was great working with him in that regard.

And I wound up doing the same thing actually later in life.

He's always a Porsche fan.

You what?

He was always a 9-11 fan.

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Okay, so now let's go to

beyond that.

You then start a like a private, it's not a defense company, but it works with defense, right?

You're training.

It was a defense company.

Our customer was the department, was the DOD and some of our allies.

And so the story here is I always loved aviation since a kid, back to top gun, right stuff.

So I started flying in 2004 when I just was waking up on my keyboard and needed a hobby.

And I just didn't look back.

2008, 2009, I started getting...

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

You were on your keyboard and you needed a hobby.

Like I was waking up on my keyboard every morning.

Okay, all right, okay, all right.

I mean, it was this stage of life when you're young, you don't have family or responsibilities.

You're working, you're working, working, yeah.

So I started flying, never really slowed down, knew I wanted to fly, you know, jets and ex-military aircraft.

So I started flying air shows

2010, 2011, and I had the best team in the world that I was flying with.

I mean, former Thunderbirds,

you know, again, Dale Snodgrass, highest timed F-14 pilot in the world, just amazing.

And we were flying a seven-ship aerobatic routine at air shows across the country.

And,

you know, we were having the best times of our lives, but we were also saying, you know, we all know this industry well enough to know that it, you know, there's always going to be a bad day.

Like it's, it's inevitable at some point.

We should try and pivot this to something commercial.

And I literally traveled around the world and bought fleets of fighter jets from countries that were selling them and import them back in the U.S.

and modernize them.

And then we were literally the top gun adversaries for the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps.

You were the bad guys.

We were the bad guys.

We would replicate Russian, Chinese, Iranian tactics.

We became the world's largest private air force.

We had over 100 fighter jets, and it was cool.

I mean,

very cool.

I bet it was.

So

you wouldn't tell them what you were going to do.

I mean, that had to have been...

I've always wondered if you're training the same people who are training you how to defend yourself also are the ones coming in.

You're not

You're not necessarily getting new input.

So did you, you know what I mean?

So maybe to describe it, there are things like when you're supporting the weapon school, for example, which is the Air Force version of Top Gun, they're actually giving you a lot of things that are scripted out because they're trying to train their, what they consider their PhD of fighter pilot course, certain things, and arrive at these desired learning objectives.

And in which case,

if we do everything right and they do everything right, we die.

And then there are some which is just total, you know,

the gloves come off, fangs out, and they don't know what's coming.

And if they make mistakes, it's our job to punish them.

And

it was, I mean, it was super cool.

I wound up selling the business to Blackstone in 2019 because I was taking my other company public, but I still kept a handful of fighter jets.

It's actually, I'm on my way to America's biggest air show, Oshkosh, and I'm flying MiG-29 in it.

Wow.

Isn't it hard to get a license to fly military and to own or not?

I've had the type type ratings for about 16, 17 years.

So I have all the ratings for it.

But you should have a lot of experience to fly them.

I mean, if they can go twice the speed of sound,

there's a lot of energy there.

You know, one of the people, and this probably seems so ridiculous to you, but I think one of the guys that really actually inspires me just because

he does everything himself is Tom Cruise.

100%.

I mean, that guy is amazing.

100%.

You don't know him.

I mean, it's not like Fighter Jet, Fighter.

So actually,

on my first mission to space, he called up and spoke to us.

Wow.

And then he said, when you guys come back, I want you to come to a screening of Top Gun 2.

So he arranged that for us.

And then every now and then, we exchanged a text.

He invited my wife and I out to see the new Mission Impossible movie

a couple weeks ago.

But yeah, I mean,

he's awesome.

He really is.

He's so inspiring, too.

He is.

It's like when you're watching him, I think I was talking to, I think my son, we were talking about AI and how anything can be done now in AI.

And, you know, what do special effects even mean?

And I said,

AI will become humdrum very soon, except for people like Tom Cruise, because you know it's him.

And there is a difference between CGI and watching him going, what is wrong with this guy?

He just goes and goes.

Completely agree.

Yeah.

You set a world record.

What is it?

61 hours flying around the.

Yeah, back in 08

and then again in 09.

That's actually what got me exposed to the commercial space industry.

We did that record and flew.

It was just how fast you could fly around the world.

And we also did it to raise awareness for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

And when I came back,

Dr.

Peter Diamanis,

he's like a serial entrepreneur, but he promotes all sorts of just cool endeavors in commercial space and human life extension.

He tackles really interesting projects.

He invited me to Bankanor, Kazakhstan, with the early commercial space industry to see a launch.

And that was my connection, you know, early connection to SpaceX and others

was from that around-the-world flight.

When you were flying, I mean,

you had to have thought of people like Lindbergh and what the difference was

between what you did and what he did.

Oh, yeah.

That's insane.

Everything,

any of the adventures that I've been fortunate enough to be on, whether it's in aviation or in space, pales in comparison to the early pioneers that risked it all to break down the door.

I don't know if you saw when we came in, do you see the NASA Freedom or Friendship 7 capsule above the door?

No, I didn't.

Okay, so we have the Friendship 7 capsule made by NASA for the early days for their tours.

No kidding.

Yeah.

And

you look inside, you know, and it's got the

astronaut in there.

And you look inside, and

there's no way any of us would get into anything like that now.

There's just no way.

Definitely don't do it if you're claustrophobic.

No, but it's still, you look, I mean, I guess it was the technology of the day that was so advanced, but you look at the technology and you're like, ah, that's like flying into space with a microwave.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

No, not going to do it.

They were heroes.

So you were nominated to head NASA.

Tell me, first of all, what that is like, getting the nomination to head something like NASA, especially if you're in kindergarten thinking, I want to go to space.

It was incredible.

I mean,

I found the whole experience

very enlightening, thrilling.

Even the good and bad, I mean, it's like there's a lot of bad in politics.

Like I enjoyed the experience and the more.

Wait, wait.

Of politics?

Yeah.

I haven't been in it.

I've been around it.

What exactly did you find enjoyable about that?

I think it's just a

really complicated, right?

We designed this system where you're going to take a couple hundred people and who knows how many layers around them all that have to generally come together with some sort of majority to get things done.

And that's incredibly challenging.

And I can see the good part when it arrives at the right outcome.

And I certainly have seen some of the ugliness too when people are trying to maneuver for what they think is

the right outcome.

But from my perspective, just like once you overcame some of the intimidation factor of being in that environment, I thought this is an arena I can be helpful in for all the right reasons.

So it was, you're seeing how the government works for all of the good and all the blemishes associated with it.

It was a, I don't know, it was a perspective I was thankful to have.

I guess I shouldn't say

I've been around politicians

and elections.

And elections

oh my gosh,

horrible.

Just horrible what these guys put up with and do and everything else.

What needs to happen with NASA?

If you were, and we're getting into what happened to the nomination and everything else, but when you were nominated, you put together a list of things that has to happen.

For sure.

What were those things?

Well, I mean, even just to interview with the president, you know, you had to come with a game plan.

So this was in, I don't know, the last day or two of November, the first day or two of December 24.

And, you know, it was pretty simple.

Everything I did in the six months or so through, you know, of the confirmation process was just to build it out in greater detail with what needs to happen and when, who the right people are to do it.

But essentially, it comes down to the same things.

You know,

there needs to be some sort of a reorganization of the agency so you can kind of get back to concentrating on the real needle movers, the things that if NASA doesn't do it, no one will.

Or if it is done, it'll be be done by the Chinese or the Russians.

Well, returning to the moon, getting to, you know, establishing a pathway to Mars.

Wait, stop.

Let's go to the moon.

First of all, it'll be our first time because we never went.

I can't, those people drive me out of my mind.

Yeah.

But why is it important for us to go back to the moon?

Well, I think it comes down to, you know,

what we may learn from a scientific perspective,

what economic benefit might be out there in our general national security.

Let's take like Helium-3, for example.

Maybe there's a 1% or less probability that that could transform energy creation here on Earth.

How many wars have we fought over the last 100 years based on sources of energy?

I mean, you get something wrong in space, and we have literally just dipped our toe into this and our understanding of it.

It could shift the balance of power here on Earth.

I don't know how we could ever afford to fall behind in the ultimate high ground of space.

Because if we do, we may never catch up at all.

So from my perspective, you've got to reorganize because you're doing lots of little things and there's a lot of bureaucracy there that's impeding progress and concentrate on what no one else will do except maybe our geopolitical rivals.

And then it's leading in the high ground of space.

It's figuring out the space economy.

Because right now, everything we do in space is funded by taxpayers.

So you're not going to have that Star Wars-like future we all imagine of rocket zipping by if every taxpayer has to contribute.

We need to figure out what is the orbital economy.

Is it pharmaceuticals?

Is it mining?

Is it energy-related sources?

Got to figure it out.

What do you think it is?

Well, look, I mean, what's for sure is there is

material, there's elements, metals that are up there that we know have value.

Now, people talk about the asteroid with $2 trillion worth of rare minerals in it, and that supply-demand gets thrown off the moment you introduce $2 trillion

into the system.

But we know it's out there, so

you can go out and

potentially mine and extract it.

I think we really have only scratched the surface with some of the pharmaceutical work.

There's good companies like Varda that's experimenting.

What does that work?

I'm sorry?

What does that work?

What are they doing?

They're doing like crystal formulation of medical treatment, so increasing the density of the treatment by these crystal formulations.

But I think the big concern is we don't have a good answer yet, despite having a space station up there for 20 years.

The biggest accomplishment we've had is keeping people alive continuously for 20 years in the harsh environment of space, which is good.

But we haven't figured out that magic wand, this treats cancer,

this improves some technology for average Americans or citizens dramatically.

And part of that is the bureaucracy.

To give you just an example, and this is, I talk about NASA, but this is government-wide, right?

The iPhone.

The Russians have brought it to the space station, which they share with the Americans.

The commercial astronauts who've gone to the space station have brought iPhones.

NASA has yet to approve iPhones to go to the space station for their astronauts.

And it's like, well, that's kind of like a petty example, but it's like, how do I know there isn't a ton of cancer-treating formulas that have been waiting eight years to get approval to go to the space station that could

have a real economic benefit, in which case, you know, it could fund this future in space we all want.

Lots of space stations, for example.

Why

go back to the iPhone?

Why?

Is that one of those things like,

you got to turn your phone off as we take off because it could...

I mean, it's probably, you know, if you're, I think culturally in this nation,

and again, this is not specific to NASA, but I mean, we've become very risk-averse.

There are, one of my themes is there are some risks worth taking.

Exploring the worlds beyond ours is a risk worth taking.

You're not going to get there if you're not accepting some risk, just as we do for our Navy pilots flying off aircraft carriers, our troops that go into different combat.

We put people in higher-risk environments because there's a purpose that we think is worth it.

Space is certainly no different in that regard.

But I remember getting a list of all the departments in NASA as I was thinking through reorganization.

If you do a control F and type the word safety, you're going to find 50 different departments.

And that's not to say safety isn't important, but if you have lots of people in a position to say no rather than bubbling it up logically to a single organization, it's going to be easier to just say no.

I mean, the best way to keep astronauts and pilots safe is don't fly and don't go to space.

So So what happened to the nomination?

Well, I was on, I guess, the

one-yard line.

So I'd already cleared committee vote.

There was bipartisan support.

I was two days away from the floor vote that would have confirmed me.

And I think there was a very public falling out that took place.

And I became, I guess, a casualty of that.

The public falling out being.

So I think that, well put it this way this the same day that

you know that Elon got the golden key to the White House and a very you know public farewell was the day that I got a call that the president decided to go in a different direction

But you two aren't connected.

I mean you know each other, but you're not really connected, are you?

No, that's you know that I mean certainly it was funny because that was what a lot of the you know the Democrat senators were asking me throughout the confirmation process is like this conflict of interest.

You know, you you you and Elon go way back.

I was like, wait a second, I paid him to go to go to space the same as NASA does because there's no other choice in the matter.

Obviously, I have a ton of respect for him and what SpaceX has done.

They've sent me to space on two challenging missions and brought us back alive.

But hey, if there were three companies, I bet I would have paid less.

It's not like, I mean, I grew up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

He was on the West Coast.

I have no Silicon Valley connections, never had any Silicon Valley money.

We've never gone out on a social dinner.

It's been a professional relationship, and I have a ton of respect for him.

But I made it clear during the hearing, you know, my loyalty was to the nation and the space agency.

SpaceX is an important vendor, just as, you know, during, you know, James Webb had important relationships with McDonnell Douglas and Boeing and others during the 1960s.

So

you are,

if I had to look at your history, And I would say the same thing about Donald Trump when he was private.

I would say you're a Democrat because of the money you've given.

Donald Trump, he lived in New York, he's given money to Democrats.

But you also, you donated $300,000 to Democrats, including $100,000 to a PAC affiliated with Chuck Schumer.

I'm going to hold that against you, actually.

But you also gave $2 million

to Trump.

Yeah, I've actually even given more than that to Trump and the Republicans,

even after my nomination was pulled.

It's interesting.

You obviously don't go very far in the confirmation process without

having a microscope held to you.

You can just Google and see what my donation history was.

I explained it in writing, probably to the person who ultimately pulled the trigger on me back on January 9th.

When I came back from space in 2021, you'll notice there were no Democratic donations prior to 2021 at all.

They were only Republican donations.

Not that there were many, but I wasn't very political.

I mean, Governor Scott, because that's where my company was in Florida, now Senator Scott.

So I came back from space in 2021 and I befriended a senator who's an astronaut, and I do respect him a lot.

How could I not?

He's a naval aviator, and he's a multi-time NASA astronaut.

And he was helping me with some things too.

My next Polaris mission was supposed to go boost the Hubble telescope, and I had to work against the institutional inertia at NASA to try and prevent it.

So over three years, I did give $300,000.

That's not me trying to swing an election.

You know, I gave $125 million to St.

Jude Children's Research Hospital.

I've given tens of millions of dollars to Space Camp, to the Naval Aviation Museum.

That's me trying to send a message that I'm behind it.

This was

somebody I respect a lot asking for help over a three-year period.

When I saw kind of

the president coming out of the, and for what it's worth, I've never donated to any of Trump's opponents.

I've never voted against him in any of the elections.

But when I saw, you know, the assassination attempt,

his kind of rise from that

doge especially,

like I am very pro, you know, we got to shrink the government, get the national debt under control, and take the funds that we're saving from this to get warfighters, for example, more of what they need for the competitiveness of the nation.

So I got pretty energized.

That's why I made those donations to the president.

It was why I was honored to serve in his administration.

So help me out on this.

I mean, you obviously are smart enough to see what's over the horizon with AI.

Elon Musk said, we're going to have,

you know, new laws of physics possibly by Christmas.

We may have new alloys by Christmas.

I don't know how you feel, but I think like the aircraft carrier is the horse of World War I.

Good luck on that aircraft carrier.

You know what I mean?

You got drones.

Everything's about to change.

And we are on the cusp of AI.

We have no idea what the change even will look like.

No one can imagine because we won't be directing it.

It will be directing us.

How do we, in this space

where we're at,

I don't understand why we're spending money on things that are 20 years in the planning when in six months, all of that could be out the window.

Wow,

this is deep.

I mean, first of all, this goes to the heart of probably my only real political position, which is ensuring the ongoing competitiveness of the nation.

And we have spent a very long time, even through the Cold War, leading in every major technological field.

And our skills, as they atrophy right now, others, especially China, are hitting their stride.

So that makes me concerned because they are literally going after every one of the major technological and engineering hurdles that are out there and just resourcing it and seeing what happened.

They're doing it in space.

They're doing it with their fighter aircraft, their drone shows.

I mean, you see their drone shows on their amazing

New Year's, you're like, amazing.

I mean,

it is scary good.

They want to play around with the future.

I mean, I know this sounds so stupid, but I saw their drone shows right around the time we were lighting fireworks.

And I'm like,

why are there no shows like that in America?

What is it that they have?

That we're not, we don't have.

They have incredible second mover advantage.

Incredible second mover advantage.

They've watched.

Meaning what?

Well, so like we, we were, obviously, we were the first with the Manhattan Project.

We had no baggage.

We just simply set up the facilities and hired the talent we needed

and resourced it accordingly and had the will to achieve the outcome we wanted.

Space race, same thing.

We set up all the centers we needed.

Where's the best place for engine work?

Where's the best place to launch rockets?

How about off Florida at Kennedy Space Center, right?

We resource it, had the will to do big, bold things.

Now we have all this baggage.

I mean, again, NASA's 10 centers, they're all doing lots of little things, not necessarily the original things they were doing when those centers were created.

The national laboratories that were originally created to support the Manhattan Project are all doing lots of little things.

Now you want to try and repurpose that energy back to its original purpose.

And you got a lot of people that hate change, that don't want necessarily change, a lot of bureaucracy.

Whereas China's like, oh, that makes sense.

Put the center there, resource it, put the will behind it, and get it done.

And they're moving very quickly along a number of subjects, a number of important domains, including including AI.

And

it's very unnerving.

Like that we can just do big, bold things hasn't kind of been part of our game plan a long time.

A long time.

A long time.

You know, I talked to the president and I said, I think history will mark you as the AI president because it's all happening under him.

But also because he is cobbling together.

I mean, people don't understand what he was doing in the Middle East.

He's trying to make sure China

isn't selling the chips to everybody, that we still are selling the chips.

The energy, the work on nuclear energy, that he is just

opening the door like, you want to build a nuclear power plant, I'll cut the red tape for you.

Those things are remarkable, and nobody's paying attention to that.

Nobody even sees what that is.

How important is that?

It's incredibly important.

I have the black make nuclear great again hat.

I love that.

I mean, we're going to need a lot of power.

We're going to need a lot of power for AI for sure.

And it's time we unleash the commercial industry that is capable of doing this.

Like, to me, when you know, thinking about it, NASA, the next, you know, the pivot away from the big rockets that they're working on now to the future is nuclear-powered spaceships, which also provide surface nuclear power when you ultimately get there.

Thank goodness the president is clearing the way on that.

Or do you know how long it would take to

launch a reactor?

You never knew.

Even to transport the fissile material.

You can't build one that stays on the planet.

I totally agree.

I totally agree.

And look, I think he's doing a lot of things.

We don't have like a, in terms of like getting our 37 trillion national debt under control, I don't think we have a revenue problem.

We have a spend problem.

Now, it's at 37 trillion.

We may not be able to get out of this without trying to adjust the revenue, the revenue problem as well.

But we have a lot of money that we are spending in kind of all the general right areas.

It's just so much of it isn't making it down to the ultimate project.

So, the fact that

the president is trying to break some of the bureaucracy, shrink the government, so those resources can be applied to what's necessary for our national security is vitally important.

I just hope it's not too late.

But isn't that

where the private market comes in?

Because I thought

when I,

you know,

I'm thinking, you know, AI is going to consume 99% of our current power generation.

That's not going to work out.

And I was going to ask the president about where are we on nuclear power?

And he, I didn't even ask.

He said, I'm cutting all the red tape, blah, blah, blah.

But what he said was

that's for private corporations to do.

If you're a private corporation, you want to build a server farm and you need the power, fine, I'll cut the red tape.

You build the power plant.

I mean, it really is.

This

bloated system is so bloated, and we have to move so fast.

It really is good to see reach out beyond that and say, you do it.

You do it.

I'm absolutely concur.

I do think there are some things, as I kind of mentioned before, that no corporation, no other agency is capable of doing, like in the context of NASA.

No one's going to build nuclear spaceships right now.

And getting nuclear reactors in space gives us golden dome implications.

You put solid-state

lasers on them, it's transport, it's terrestrial power when you actually get to Mars.

But there are some things like, is our commercial industry capable of building nuclear reactors?

Absolutely.

And should the president be trying to cut as much red tape and enable them to do it?

Yes.

You need enough competent ones though, and enough competition that when they actually get the approvals, they can get things done quickly and they don't take forever.

And in the defense world, you got a lot of consolidation there that moves very slow.

But then, thankfully, because I at one point thought the only way you're going to get them in gear is to actually break them up.

You've got companies like Androll now who are, you know, like the SpaceX of the defense industry saying, if you're going to keep moving at a snail's pace, I'm going to come in and break all this up for you, which is actually our system working as design, which is great to see.

And one more question.

The guy who nomination withdraw, what you said was, quote, one guy who probably made a mistake.

Who's the one guy and what was his mistake?

I mean,

I acknowledge that this whole situation generally had very little to do with me.

So I'm not like an active combatant.

I might have taken a shot in this.

So I'm not naming like any

names on this.

I just think where the real mistake was,

if you didn't like me, shoot me in the head in January or February.

Don't wait six months to go through the whole Senate confirmation process, put together a whole plan, and then shoot me.

Because what happens is, you know, the world's greatest space agency is left without political leadership.

there is no there's no leadership yeah i mean you know i i think it was a good move the president recently put um you know secretary duffy in as the the acting um administrator he's got a lot of responsibilities as a as a the transportation secretary but um you know you you wait that whole time for elon to be shown the door and then to settle a score with me and at the expense of what like my life's okay i can go back to doing other things it's it's nasa that gets left in a very you know uh difficult spot during turbulent times and that's you know that's where that's where I think you made a mistake.

It's not necessarily about me.

There's a lot of really great people I have no doubt that could run now.

If the president asked you to come back, would you?

For sure.

I felt like I, I mean, look, I dropped out of school at 16 and have lived an extraordinary life.

That's the American dream at its finest right there.

I absolutely have a debt to the country, and I would give back and serve in any capacity.

What are the biggest things that are coming our way that you think?

I wish people would pay attention to this?

They don't understand what.

Well,

I think we've actually touched on a lot of them.

Is that for the first time, we have one hell of a competitor in a long time.

I mean, even during the Cold War.

Is it true?

Somebody said to me, a billionaire

who actually was there opening up China,

and he said to me,

China will never beat us

at this point

because

they can copy, but they can't outthink.

And I'm not sure that's true anymore.

That is totally a dated type of thinking.

And I heard that a lot when we were replicating the Chinese tactics

at Drakken as adversaries.

And in 2011, in 2012, it was, oh, their engines are no good.

They buy everything from Russia and reverse engineer it.

Things happen quickly over there.

Relying on 10 or 15 year old information on China is a mistake.

That might as well be centuries ago.

They do, at some point, at some stage, they copy, reverse engineer, and make it better.

Now they have their whole general line of thinking.

They've totally, as a country that once depended on buying

old hardware from Russia,

they now, like, their spaceship is better.

They're building sixth-generation fighters and showing it off over the holidays.

Russia doesn't even have sixth-generation fighters.

We just committed to ours, ours, the F-47 that the president unveiled a couple months ago.

They've been shooting.

What is a sixth-generation fighter?

So fifth gen is stealth.

So that's your F-22, F-35, or low-observable, harder to see.

Sixth generation was what comes after that.

That's where like the plane really can't even fly if it isn't with special computers that are compensating for like really dramatic like airframe designs.

No vertical stabilizers on them.

Think of like the B-2, but shrunk down in a fighter form.

And they're going higher, faster.

They're doing radical things like post-stall maneuvering where the plane shouldn't be flying, but it still can point because it has so much thrust.

They're data linking all their hearts.

In any case, the idea that, hey, they just are reverse engineering everything is really old thinking.

They're moving really quick.

I truly believe.

Unless we get our act together in this, they will for sure get back to the moon before we can.

And that will be what a shock to the system.

Like, there should be congressional hearings at that.

It should be like, what went wrong that we were able to do this knowing very little in the 1960s that we've spent over a hundred billion?

That's how much we've spent to date between Constellation and Artemis, and we still can't get back.

Well, Artemis, I mean, when Trump first took over, and I don't think he even knew this, I was doing a show on,

I can't remember,

I think it was on DEI

and how that's just taking our focus so far away from merit.

And

I got a call from somebody at NASA, and they showed us that the whole Artemis program had been shifted where its goal was to put the first black woman on the moon.

And it's like,

I don't care who it is.

Let's get to the moon.

Let's get to the moon.

If it happens to be a woman, she's black.

Great.

Great.

But

it seems as though so many of our priorities are just upside down.

You know, it's interesting.

When I was going

and meeting with all the senators one-on-one, first, whether senators on both sides of the aisle care.

I met with plenty of Republican senators.

They're saying, I want to make sure we're still planning to put a woman on the moon when we go back to.

And my answer to both sides was the same.

We got to get back to the moon.

It's exactly what you said.

We have spent $100 billion.

Every president president since 1989 has called for a return to the moon and a path to Mars.

And we have yet to deliver on that.

So, look,

we need to be doing what first, how do you solve like a talent problem too in this whole thing?

If you're working on the near impossible that no one else is capable of doing, you're going to attract the best and brightest.

There's no doubt about that.

And then focus the best and brightest on the mission and nothing else.

We need to get back to the moon.

We need a path to Mars.

How are we going to do it?

And all the other things

are totally like, when we get there, we'll figure it out.

How close is China?

They have said publicly that they will get there before 2030.

They've since revised their estimates.

There's no way we're going to make that.

They've revised their estimates saying potentially as early as 2028, but I don't know why they would tell us the truth.

Like the best thing for them is to let us continue to stagnate on this and then get there and say, look, we are the might now in the high ground of space and we're moving on to the next stop.

So,

yeah,

I'm nervous about our ability to get back to the moon.

Is it a possibility?

I mean, you saw my Sputnik.

Sputnik kicked us in the ass.

I mean, it's what started everything.

And that's when we got serious.

When the Russians, when we were like, wait, what did they just do?

That's when we got serious.

We're always best when we are down on the mat.

I don't know if that's true anymore because we've lost a lot of the fight in us.

But

could that be the thing that we need to kick us in the butt?

You know, I felt that way, and I often said that amongst some of my associates long before this nomination, but while in the space industry, I was like, maybe

America needs the Chinese to get to the moon to have a wake-up call.

When I was nominated to lead NASA, I was like, there's no way in hell we're going to let that happen.

But I think the real fear, though, right now is there could be a Sputnik moment across so many domains.

It's not just in space, right?

I mean, you've got, you know, fusion power, nuclear research, you've got quantum, you've got AI.

I mean...

Where are we on that stuff?

Do you know?

I mean...

I just think we always are trying to repurpose a lot of things we already have that have turned to various broad-based science or other initiatives and trying to refocus them back onto like the near impossible, the big thing is hard to do versus start from scratch.

You know, China just says, get me the best, 10, the 10 best people working on quantum computing and put them here because it makes sense to put them here and give them whatever they need.

And they just go and run.

You know, for example, like,

you know, Stennis,

it's a NASA center in Mississippi.

They've been working, they're principally work on the RS-25 motor.

The RS-25 motor is the space shuttle motor.

It's essentially a 55-year-old

motor.

It's an awesome motor.

It's a great motor.

That's what they do primarily there.

Now, they've done a good job working with commercial industry.

Their governor is great on bringing in other people to test engines, but they're just doing that versus like at the time it was first established of you will just do engines and when you figure this one out, you move on to the next one versus entrenching on something they have because I don't know what's coming next and I don't want to fear not having something next, so I better hold on to it.

That's a recipe for disaster.

But I think that exists across, you know, again, it's not just NASA, I think it's across the government.

We have a lot of people that get entrenched in the past instead of working on the future.

But I don't understand how people don't see that's the secret of SpaceX and quite honestly, Elon Musk.

It's,

I got a crazy idea.

Let's get a bunch of crazy people to do it and then just do it.

Politicians are to blame too in this whole thing, too.

I mean, if you've got big, you know, in-state equities, a couple centers, and you're working on something, you're like, well, maybe the right thing to do for the country is to move on to this, but I don't know if I can take the risk

on the workforce.

You know, and

I had a great conversation actually with Senator Kennedy in Louisiana.

The Michoud plant is where they build a lot of the SLS rocket and assemble it.

And he was great.

He's like, just

tell me what's coming next.

And I was like, sir, I'm so glad you asked that instead of just saying we got to keep doing what we're doing.

Because, you know, my understanding of the history of Michoud is it made landing craft during World War II.

It made the Saturn rocket.

It made the space shuttle.

It's making SLS now.

What's the right thing next?

Let's not keep making battleships when everybody pivots the aircraft carrier.

He was very receptive to that.

Love it.

But not everybody is.

Yeah, I know.

I know.

It's great to meet you.

Great to talk to you.

Thank you very much.

Mean pleasure.

Thanks for having me on.

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