President Donald Trump missed a great opportunity when he named Sean Duffy as Interim Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Duffy is already serving as Secretary of Transportation with the main qualification that the 53-year won the reality TV show Road Rules: All Stars.
Like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Duffy looks good on camera. But you know who looks better on camera and has actual aeronautic experience?
Lauren Sánchez Bezos.
Here are six reasons why Sanchez Bezos would make a better NASA chief than Duffy.
She has a passion for the skies
Sánchez Bezos grew up around aviation. Her father Ray Sánchez worked as a flight instructor and mechanic in New Mexico and later owned a flight school. She reportedly earned a fixed-wing certificate–although her name does not appear in the FAA database–and has trained for her helicopter pilot certification.
Earning a commercial helicopter license requires over a hundred hours of training and includes a written exam which tests knowledge of aerodynamics, weather systems, radio communications, mechanical systems, electrical systems, and crew resource management (CRM) which is a critical part of any passenger operation.
Duffy’s knowledge of aviation was revealed early in his cabinet tenure when a United States military Black Hawk helicopter tragically collided with an American Airlines passenger plane. Duffy dug into his expertise to reassure the public that “obviously it is not standard to have aircraft collide. I want to be clear on that.”
She’s been to space
On April 14, Sánchez Bezos rode in a Blue Origin rocket which the company reports blasted beyond the Kármán line. Technically–even if just for a moment–she’s visited outer space. The whole journey took 11 minutes and included an all-woman crew with pop singer Katy Perry and journalist Gayle King going along for the ride. (Perry might be looking for a career shift and would also be available to head NASA.)
If Sánchez Bezos were running NASA, she could speak with authority and experience. And whenever someone mentions space, she can retort, “Yeah, I know. I’ve been there.”
She is camera ready.
In the Trump administration, looking good is so important that Hegseth installed a make-up studio in the Pentagon so he could glam up before press conferences. Duffy was cute enough to be cast in The Real World: Boston, but a recent appearance on Fox News shows a man struggling to apply his spray-on tan.
Sánchez Bezos always looks paparazzi ready. Plus, she’s already invested in a Mar-a-Lago face so she’ll fit in with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Sánchez Bezos co-hosted the Fox morning show Good Day, L.A. from 2011-2017 so she knows how to stare down a camera. More recently, she appeared on the digital cover of Vogue’s June issue. As administrator of NASA, she would bring some much-needed flair to the stereotypically geeky.
A side-by-side comparison with President Joe Biden’s NASA administrator Bill Nelson makes the point:
Logistics Expertise
Sánchez Bezos just pulled off a million global project reported to cost $50 million and brought it in on time. Her recent wedding to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was a three-day extravaganza with multiple Kardashians splashing down in Venice, Italy. The celebration also included fireworks over the Venice Laguna which looked a little like when Musk’s Space X rocket exploded in June.
Revenge on Elon Musk
Duffy got the nod to lead NASA because Trump dumped original nominee Jared Isaacman just days before the Senate was set to vote. Although Isaacman denied being “close” to Musk in his Senate hearings, he has flown to space twice with Musk’s SpaceX and deflected when asked if Musk was present during his job interview with Trump.
Duffy and Musk have been at odds, arguing about air traffic controllers and Musk’s Starlink satellite communications systems. Still, installing the wife of the Blue Origins CEO to control the funds of the national space program would be a blow to Musk’s rocket company and ego.
Foam parties at Kennedy Space Center!
In the week before their wedding, the Bezos-Sánchez’s amused themselves by throwing a foam party on their yacht. That’s the kind of innovative thinking that allowed the United States to put a man on the moon in the first place. As President John F. Kennedy said in his famous “We choose” speech: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”
Why not fun? Can’t we do things because they are fun? If Sánchez Bezos were in charge of NASA, things would get done and there’d be a lot more fun.
The post Opinion: Sean Duffy Shouldn’t Run NASA. Why its Perfect Pilot is…Lauren Sánchez appeared first on The Daily Beast.
