I am tentatively hopeful. It looks like he has some exposure to federal procurement via Draken. He doesn’t seem to be a shuddering asshole, which distinguishes him from a number of other potential appointees. As usual these days I would guess good for exploration, less good for other science. If the National Academies report is to be believed (and it should be) he’ll inherit a remarkable pile of infrastructure issues, a troubled Moon to Mars, and an increasingly disillusioned workforce. Should be enough to keep him busy, but they’re actually all issues that his experience could be relevant to… and it looks like he truly loves space, so that’s a huge positive.
So - more services contracts for sure. I’d look to see some really interesting hijinks from non-spaceX companies that are potentially about to get boxed out of NASA procurement; the existing fixed-price model seems to be something that only SpaceX can pull off, which is bad for competition. I’d look to see folks getting increasingly less excited about working at the agency - folks want to be rocket scientists, not contract managers. Curious to see if that’s a problem Issacson tries to tackle.
I am tentatively hopeful. It looks like he has some exposure to federal procurement via Draken. He doesn’t seem to be a shuddering asshole, which distinguishes him from a number of other potential appointees. As usual these days I would guess good for exploration, less good for other science. If the National Academies report is to be believed (and it should be) he’ll inherit a remarkable pile of infrastructure issues, a troubled Moon to Mars, and an increasingly disillusioned workforce. Should be enough to keep him busy, but they’re actually all issues that his experience could be relevant to… and it looks like he truly loves space, so that’s a huge positive.
So - more services contracts for sure. I’d look to see some really interesting hijinks from non-spaceX companies that are potentially about to get boxed out of NASA procurement; the existing fixed-price model seems to be something that only SpaceX can pull off, which is bad for competition. I’d look to see folks getting increasingly less excited about working at the agency - folks want to be rocket scientists, not contract managers. Curious to see if that’s a problem Issacson tries to tackle.