By Micah Maidenberg

When Jared Isaacman gave up his childhood dream of becoming a NASA astronaut, he still needed to get his adrenaline fix somewhere.

He found it after dropping out of high school and building startups, becoming a billionaire in the process. He's flown jet fighters for fun, including a Russian MiG-29. And he's cultivated a deepening connection with Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX helped Isaacman realize his goal of reaching orbit.

Five months ago, Isaacman popped out of a hatch on a SpaceX-built Crew Dragon craft and into the freezing vacuum of space. The "Polaris Dawn" mission, which Isaacman partly funded, had journeyed farther from Earth than any human mission in decades.

The operation tested new SpaceX-designed suits, showcasing how the private sector has moved to the vanguard of advancing human space flight. It also showed Isaacman's own appetite for risk.

"You've got to push boundaries," Isaacman said during a 2021 interview with The Wall Street Journal. "You have to go past where we're comfortable."

President Trump has tapped the entrepreneur to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. If confirmed, Isaacman, 42, would take the controls of a nearly 70-year-old organization with a $25 billion budget that's synonymous with space exploration but has struggled in recent years to deliver on some high-profile projects, while facing new competition from China in orbit.

The job also would require Isaacman to navigate his relationship with Musk, who has a powerful role advising Trump. In a post Thursday on X, Musk said the International Space Station should be taken out of orbit sooner than current plans call for, and indicated that NASA should prioritize his and SpaceX's longtime goal. "Let's go to Mars," the post concluded.

Isaacman, who declined to comment for this article, would bring close ties to Musk and SpaceX, which has at times outpaced NASA's own capabilities.

Both Isaacman and Shift4, the payment-processing company he founded and leads as chief executive, have invested in SpaceX. And while he wouldn't be the first NASA administrator to have visited space, he would be the first who got there via SpaceX.

In a recent post on X, Isaacman said he was eager to earn the trust of the Senate, whose confirmation his job requires. He has cheered the idea of sending humans to Mars, a mission that has driven Musk for decades, and one Trump mentioned during his inauguration speech last month. A date hasn't been set for any confirmation hearing.

Jet-fighter jockey

A space fan since he was a kindergartner, Isaacman for a time settled on aviation.

Isaacman, who grew up in the New York City suburb of Westfield, N.J., is married with two children and lives near Easton, Pa. He began training as a pilot as he built Shift4 Payments. The company provides payment-processing services for restaurants, resorts and other venues.

In 2011, Isaacman co-founded a company called Draken International, which amassed a fleet of jet fighters it uses in so-called adversary-training exercises with military customers.

By 2020, the year Isaacman took Shift4 public, he was on a phone call with SpaceX, which would later tap Shift4 to handle payments for its satellite-internet business, Starlink. Earlier that same year, SpaceX conducted its first-ever launch with a human crew on board, taking two NASA astronauts to the space station. Spaceflight was on Isaacman's mind.

"I did close the call by making a comment that, 'Hey, you know, whenever you guys are ready to really open this thing up, keep me in mind because I'm super-interested.' And they were like, 'Oh, really? Because we might be a little bit closer than you think,' " Isaacman said in the 2021 interview.

Those conversations evolved into Inspiration4, a 2021 flight that put Isaacman and three other private individuals aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle that reached low-Earth orbit. It was one of a series of missions that year that highlighted the nascent private spaceflight industry, which aims to open up orbit to more people.

That mission also led to what Isaacman and SpaceX named the Polaris program -- a multiflight effort Isaacman is helping fund that aims to test new SpaceX technologies. The first Polaris operation occurred in September. He and three others used SpaceX-designed spacesuits while in low-Earth orbit, marking the first time nongovernment astronauts were exposed to the void of space.

Running NASA would mean managing an agency with around 18,000 employees who pursue a sprawling set of science and exploration efforts, from building scientific rovers to researching climate change. Many at the agency are rattled at the moment, as colleagues prepare for potential layoffs or look to resign under a Trump administration program.

Isaacman has in the past criticized parts of the agency's program to send humans on deep-space missions, including the rocket that would start those flights, saying its cost means less funding for other NASA programs. Some members of Congress are skeptical of canceling that vehicle, saying they are worried that potential alternatives won't be ready soon enough.

SpaceX stakes

During another interview with the Journal, in mid-November, Isaacman said that he hadn't had any serious conversations about joining the Trump administration. At the time, he described himself as politically "hypermoderate."

About three weeks later, Trump said in a Truth Social post he wanted Isaacman to run the agency.

"On my last mission to space, my crew and I traveled farther from Earth than anyone in over half a century," Isaacman said in a post on X after Trump announced his nomination. "I can confidently say this second space age has only just begun."

Isaacman's ties to SpaceX as an investor, a customer, and, through his payments company, a contractor are likely to face scrutiny. While government aerospace officials have long had ties to industry, Musk's privately held SpaceX has garnered a singular role at NASA, generating worries among current and former agency employees about its dependence on the company.

SpaceX's capsules are the only American vehicles certified to ferry astronauts to and from the space station, and it has won a string of big launch contracts as competitors have struggled to ramp up flights of their own rockets. Over the years, the company has won $15 billion in deals from the agency.

Shift4, which last year generated $3.3 billion in revenue and recently had a stock-market valuation of about $9 billion, has its own ties to SpaceX. The company, where Isaacman owns 25% of common stock, purchased about $28 million in SpaceX shares in 2021, the same year Shift4 won what Isaacman has called a five-year deal to handle payments for Starlink.

Isaacman said during an investor event in December that he couldn't see how Shift4's work with Starlink would be a problem, given Shift4's large customer base. He told the Journal during the interview the prior month he had his own personal investment in SpaceX.

Isaacman could also face questions related to another hobby: gambling. In 2009, the owner of the Atlantic City, N.J., casino then known as Trump Taj Mahal filed a lawsuit against Isaacman, seeking at least $930,000.

The suit alleged that Isaacman took out a credit line from the casino in 2005 and bounced checks he provided to the company in 2008 related to the agreement, according to court records. His attorneys disputed the suit and sought to have it dismissed. The case later settled.

The president had earlier lost control of that casino, meaning he wasn't involved with the lawsuit against Isaacman.

A Connecticut casino filed a similar lawsuit against Isaacman in 2010, seeking more than $975,000 from him and claiming he wrote bad checks to the facility. That case also settled.

A spokeswoman for Isaacman had no comment.

Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 21, 2025 21:00 ET (02:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.