NASA finally—and we really do mean it this time—has a full-time leader

Now, finally, he will get a chance to act, rather than react to everyone else.

As the Project Athena plan clearly demonstrates, Isaacman has a good handle on the problems besetting NASA, an aging and increasingly bureaucratic agency. NASA can still do great things, but it has become almost infinitely harder since the heady days of Apollo six decades ago.

Isaacman has ideas to shake things up, but not to the extent of wanton change for the sake of change. It is clear from the interviews he has given to others, and in talking to him myself, that Isaacman is also a good listener. He wants to understand problems to he can work with others to apply thoughtful solutions.

Perhaps most importantly for NASA, unlike some other Trump administration nominees, he appears to be a builder, not a leveler.

His toughest mission yet

Isaacman is coming into a beleaguered and bruised agency that has faced an extraordinarily difficult year. Thanks in part to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, about 20 percent of the agency’s 17,500 employees took buyouts or early retirements. There have been significant layoffs at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and there are concerns about the future of Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Moreover, the agency is locked into a high-stakes race with China to return humans to the Moon, which, over the last 12 months, has swung in China’s favor.

NASA’s administrator is responsible for carrying out the administration’s policies and working with Congress to secure funding to do so. In this, Isaacman finds himself between a Trump administration that sought to cut NASA’s budget by 24 percent, and a House and Senate that rejected the vast majority of those cuts in budget bills.

These are big hills to climb.

Looking over the last year, it would be easy to say NASA and Isaacman have lost more than half a year because of the withdrawal of Isaacman’s nomination in late May, when he was within days of bipartisan Senate approval. However, in the intervening months, Isaacman has made strong contacts within the US Senate and the White House. As part of the campaign to build support for his renomination, Isaacman emerges with considerably more political experience, a much closer relationship with Trump, and a deeper roster of contacts in his phone.

All of which is good, because for all of the fancy flying Isaacman has done to reach this point, his most difficult sorties lie ahead of him.