Jared Isaacman, 42, a billionaire entrepreneur who has led two private space missions to orbit on SpaceX rockets, got a do-over on Wednesday to lead NASA. But his confirmation hearing was not quite a rerun.
Mr. Isaacman appeared before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, where his nomination to be administrator of the space agency was heard for the second time in eight months.
The senators acknowledged the strangeness of vetting the same person for the same job a second time. The hearing “feels a bit like Groundhog Day,” joked Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who chairs the commerce committee.
Perhaps because the senators had already grilled him once, no showstopper disagreements arose during Wednesday’s hearing. Mr. Cruz has already scheduled for Monday a committee vote on Mr. Isaacman, and said he hoped the full Senate would confirm him before the end of the year.
Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said she also wanted a fast-track confirmation for Mr. Isaacman.
President Trump nominated Mr. Isaacman last December for the NASA administrator position, and the Senate was poised to confirm him in May. Then, Mr. Trump abruptly changed his mind and yanked the nomination.
Mr. Trump said he was upset that Mr. Isaacman had contributed to the campaigns of some Democrats, including former Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.
Last month, Mr. Trump changed his mind again and renominated Mr. Isaacman.
During this second appearance before the committee, Mr. Isaacman spoke less of Mars and more of China and the moon, although he went out of his way to avoid saying “China.”
“I know it is not lost on anyone in this room that we are in a great competition with a rival that has the will and the means to challenge American exceptionalism across multiple domains, including in the high ground of space,” Mr. Isaacman said. “This is not the time for delay, but a time for action.”
He promised that NASA astronauts would step foot on the moon again as part of the agency’s Artemis program “before our great rival.”
When Mr. Trump first nominated Mr. Isaacman, it seemed related to his association with Elon Musk, the founder and chief executive of SpaceX. During Mr. Isaacman’s first nomination hearing in April, Mr. Cruz sparred with him over the focus of the American human spaceflight program.
While Mr. Cruz insisted that laws passed by Congress called for establishing a sustained and continued presence of American astronauts on the moon, Mr. Isaacman in April talked of sending of astronauts to Mars as a priority.
“I don’t think we need to make any tough trade here,” Mr. Isaacman said then. “I think we can be paralleling these efforts and doing the near impossible.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Cruz revisited that line of questioning, and this time Mr. Isaacman more readily affirmed Mr. Cruz’s priorities.
“I think the president of the United States would be very excited to see a lunar base,” Mr. Isaacman said. Later, he added, “There is no question the overwhelming near-term priority is to return American astronauts to the moon and again, establish an enduring presence on what is a very scarce piece of real estate.”
The nominee received a few pointed questions from some of the panel’s Democrats.
Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat of New Jersey, brought up a strategic plan Mr. Isaacman had put together for NASA in the spring. Mr. Kim asked whether he stood by some of what was in the plan, which calls for streamlining and reorganizing NASA without detailing specifics.
Mr. Isaacman said he did stand behind what he had written,.“I think it was all directionally correct,” he said.
Mr. Kim pointed to passages that called for re-evaluating a sustained presence on the moon and possibly transferring some of NASA’s earth science missions to private industry.
“I’m just having trouble understanding what to believe,” Mr. Kim said.
On Wednesday, Mr. Isaacman also forcefully pushed back on the perception that he was a close friend of Mr. Musk’s. “It’s funny that in a world where everybody has a phone with a camera on it, there are no pictures of us at dinner, at a bar, on an airplane or on a yacht,” he said. “Because they don’t exist.”
Mr. Isaacman said he flew with SpaceX because that was the only available option.
NASA today is different from the agency he would have taken over in May. Thousands of employees at the space agency have left as part of the administration’s efforts to shrink the federal government. Questions have also been raised about when SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft will be ready to serve as a vehicle to take astronauts to the lunar surface, and there is less time now to come up with an alternative.
Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary and temporary leader of NASA, has announced that the space agency would reopen the competition for the lander. Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, has offered NASA a simpler design that it says would be quicker to build.
“I think that competition is fantastic,” Mr. Isaacman said. “I think the best thing for SpaceX is a Blue Origin right on their heels and vice versa.”
NASA has been without a permanent leader for most of this year. As is typical, Bill Nelson, the space agency’s administrator under the Biden administration, stepped down when Mr. Trump was sworn in.
Janet Petro, the director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, filled in as acting administrator until July. Mr. Trump then put Mr. Duffy temporarily in charge.
Then last month, Mr. Trump renominated Mr. Isaacman without acknowledging his U-turn.
“Jared’s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era,” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Kenneth Chang, a science reporter at The Times, covers NASA and the solar system, and research closer to Earth.
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