President Donald Trump has renominated billionaire private space traveler Jared Isaacman to be NASA administrator. While Isaacman is expected to sail through confirmation, not everyone is enamored with the man. The same people who disdain space-faring billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos dislike Isaacman, too.
One of the tactics of the so-called “democratic socialists” to amass power is to attack billionaires, especially those who own space companies, demanding that they “pay their fair share of taxes” (an undefined amount) or be stripped of their money entirely through a wealth tax.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has often inveighed against SpaceX’s Musk and Blue Origin’s Bezos for flying rockets to help explore space and not investing their money the way he wants them to.
In an article in the Guardian, Sanders asked, concerning NASA’s contracting to SpaceX and Blue Origin to build lunar landers for the Artemis program, “If we are going to send more human beings to the moon and eventually to Mars, who will control the enterprise and what will be the purpose of that exploration? Will the goal be to benefit the people of the United States and the entire world, or will it be a vast boondoggle to make billionaires even richer and open up outer space to corporate greed and exploitation?”
The rest of the article suggests that Sanders believes the Artemis program’s purpose is the latter.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the firebrand representative from New York, got more personal where Musk is concerned: “Elon Musk is not a scientist, he is not an engineer. He is a billionaire con man with a lot of money.”
Take that, you builder of reusable rockets, electric cars, and brain-computer links that promise to enable the blind to see and the paralyzed to walk.
Now Isaacman, the billionaire private space traveler and future NASA administrator, has been targeted. Writing in the Pennsylvania newspaper Morning Call, local criminal defense attorney Ettore Angelo noted Isaacman’s recent appearance as part of the Future Makers speaker series at Lehigh University.
Angelo mentioned that Isaacman is a “high school dropout,” failing to note that the billionaire entrepreneur later got a GED and an aeronautics degree at Embry-Riddle University.
The writer went on to attack Isaacman’s love for space exploration and offered a suggestion as to where he could better spend his money.
“Here’s a frontier — more challenging than going to Mars — I propose to him and others of obscene wealth they cannot truly believe they rightfully possess, while others starve. Share your wealth to change this national embarrassment, stemming from the worst wealth inequality.”
The argument is as old as the space age. When America was still racing the Soviets to the moon during the Apollo program, politicians such as Sen. Walter Mondale (D-MN) used to hammer home the notion that money spent going to the moon and later building the space shuttle and the International Space Station would be better spent addressing problems such as poverty and the environment.
Angelo failed to note that during Isaacman’s first private space mission, Inspiration4, he combined the glory of space exploration with philanthropy. Isaacman used the space flight to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, which treats childhood cancers.
Isaacman explained his philosophy of the responsibilities of great wealth in a post on X: “To the extent you have the means, everyone has an obligation to try to leave the world better than they found it. That means balancing investments in tomorrow with solving the problems of today.”
Capitalism has created more human wealth, happiness, and freedom than any other economic system tried in the history of humankind. Socialism has created the opposite, as we saw in the old Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela, and are about to see in New York City.
That principle is no less true when it comes to space exploration. NASA, which had been in the doldrums since Apollo, has started to flourish due to its partnership with commercial companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab. Going back to the moon and on to Mars has not only become possible for the first time in decades, but has also become pretty cool, thanks to the efforts of the space capitalists.
TRUMP NOMINATES JARED ISAACMAN AS NASA CHIEF MONTHS AFTER WITHDRAWAL
The new commercial space race, through encouraging economic growth and technological development, will do far more to address poverty and other social ills than all the government programs and wealth redistribution schemes imagined by the “democratic” socialists.
As head of NASA, Isaacman will help create a commercial space future.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published Why is it So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?, The Moon, Mars and Beyond, and Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He also blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.
