‘NASA shouldn’t be building rockets anymore’: Jared Isaacman calls for pursuing the ‘near impossible’

NASA administrator nominee Jared Isaacman has sparked a renewed debate over the agency’s core mission, arguing that NASA should shift away from developing its own rockets and instead focus on “the near impossible” — breakthroughs that private companies are not currently pursuing. In a recent interview, Isaacman said NASA’s role should be to pioneer technologies such as nuclear propulsion and deep-space systems, then hand off mature capabilities to commercial partners rather than competing with them. His comments come as private launch firms like SpaceX , Blue Origin and ULA continue to expand reusable rocket development at far lower cost than NASA’s legacy hardware programmes. Isaacman, best known for commanding SpaceX’s all-civilian Inspiration4 mission and the ongoing Polaris pro