Trump Renominates Entrepreneur Jared Isaacman To Lead NASA

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I am Ira Flatow.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And I’m Flora Lichtman. Later in the hour, a common disease that can be extremely difficult to diagnose. We’re talking about endometriosis with a scientist who has dedicated her career to studying it. But first–

[PARTY HORN BLOWING]

–we have to mark a major milestone.

IRA FLATOW: Yes, it’s hard to believe, but tomorrow is Science Friday’s 34th birthday. Seems like yesterday. Our first broadcast was November 8, 1991.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Ira, I am raising a glass to you, even though it is 2:01 PM.

IRA FLATOW: [LAUGHS]

FLORA LICHTMAN: But that is amazing. Congratulations.

IRA FLATOW: Thank you, thank you. And of course, here’s a toast to all our loyal listeners over the decades. Thanks to all of you. And now, on to the show. This week, President Trump reversed himself and announced he was going to renominate Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut, to lead NASA. This comes after Trump abruptly withdrew isaacman’s original nomination last spring.

Joining me now to discuss that and other top science news of the week is my guest, science journalist and editor Sophie Bushwick. She’s based in New York City. Welcome back, Sophie.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Thanks, Ira. I’m always happy to be here.

IRA FLATOW: Before we wade into the political drama that got us to this current moment, give us a quick refresher on who Jared Isaacman is.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Jared Isaacman is an entrepreneur. He’s a billionaire who made his fortune in e-commerce. And he’s also traveled to space a couple times with the private space company, SpaceX. So he’s considered an ally of Elon Musk, who has had a hot and cold relationship with the Trump administration. And Isaacman was originally nominated and made it past at least one hurdle to become the administrator of NASA. And then President Trump withdrew his nomination and claimed that one of the reasons was he was too much of a Democrat.

But at the same time, there was a conflict going on between Elon Musk and President Trump. And so it’s unclear exactly what motivated that change. But it does seem that in the time since then, Isaacman has built up a relationship with the president and has dined with him. And now we’re seeing that renomination happen.

And one thing that’s happened since the original nomination is the release of this document, codenamed Athena, which was a shortened version of Isaacman’s proposal for how he would run NASA. And it’s believed that document was leaked in an attempt to reduce his chances of getting the job because Athena lays out a vision for NASA that involves reexamining a lot of programs to see if costs can be cut, including potentially dropping the Space Launch System, or SLS, and other projects that would have– the traditional contractors with NASA would be opposed to. So it’s possible that that was an attempt at sabotage.

But at the same time, the document was very much in line with what President Trump had suggested he wanted to happen with NASA’s budget in his budget proposal. So it might have worked the other way and helped inspire this renomination.

IRA FLATOW: OK, so what would these changes mean for NASA? And how are NASA insiders feeling about this?

FLORA LICHTMAN: It sounds like Isaacman wants to have NASA focus on human spaceflight and on working with commercial private partners, like, for example, SpaceX and Blue Origin and some of these newer space startups. And that could be a reason why this could be a problem for the traditional contractors with NASA.

But also, it sounds like he wants to explore having NASA not launch the kinds of satellites that gather data that are used by the academic sector, that those projects, he has suggested, would be better not carried out by NASA. So it could be a move away from less flashy, but very essential science. And so there has been some dislike of that plan within NASA.

IRA FLATOW: We’ve heard that before from the Trump administration.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Right.

IRA FLATOW: Let’s stay a bit longer in space, but this time, let’s talk about these three Chinese taikonauts stuck in space aboard China’s Tiangong Space Station. What happened there?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That’s right. So there was a crew of three taikonauts on the Space Station. And recently, a different crew of three launched to replace them. So for a short period, there were six taikonauts on the station. But then the original crew was supposed to travel back to Earth.

The problem is, they say that their return capsule might not be safe because it was struck by what they think is a piece of space junk, just very shortly before it was supposed to depart. So they need to check to see how much damage that craft sustained. And in the meantime, the extra large crew has to all stay aboard the Space Station.

IRA FLATOW: I’m seeing visions of the movie Gravity in my head here.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: [LAUGHS] Hopefully less catastrophic.

IRA FLATOW: [LAUGHS] Right. But space debris is a big issue, even for the International Space Station, right?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Absolutely So one of the reasons that taikonauts do spacewalks is to shore up the defenses of the Tiangong Space Station because it has previously been hit by space debris. And similarly, the International Space Station has had to deal with the threat of this kind of debris causing damage. So I think that this sort of shows what an issue that can be.

But at the same time, this is not going to be a catastrophic situation here. The taikonauts have options for getting back. I mean, they could do a thorough check of the return capsule, and maybe it’s fine once they’ve assessed it, or it has an issue that could be fixed. Or they could also use the capsule that the other crew used to travel to the station. And so that would be another option for them to get back to Earth. And there’s even a third option, which is that the Chinese space program has a contingency plan where they can launch a backup capsule up to the station to take anyone who needs to back to Earth.

IRA FLATOW: This reminds me of the NASA astronaut Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were stuck on the Space Station for nine months, right?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That’s right. They were only supposed to be there for a week, and they ended up having a much longer stay. Yeah, in that case, the threat wasn’t from space debris. But it was this worry that their return craft wouldn’t be able to safely get them back to Earth.

And so, I mean, it’s wild. The ISS has been in orbit for years. We’ve been sending astronauts and taikonauts up there for a very long time. But at the same time, there’s still new and challenges and problems that we can’t just snap our fingers and disappear. We’ve gotten better at space travel, but we’re still having to reckon with that.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, let’s talk a little bit more cosmic news. Scientists observed a gamma ray burst that lasted a full day. That’s very unusual. Tell us what a gamma ray burst is. And why is that so unusual?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That’s right. Gamma ray bursts happen when there is a massive cosmic event that releases a beam of radiation and particles. And when those beams are pointed at our solar system, we can pick them up with instruments on Earth. And so this kind of event happens relatively frequently. Astronomers can pick up a couple gamma ray bursts per day. But the fact is, they’re never longer than a few hours.

So this gamma ray burst lasting a whole day is very, very different from what we’ve seen before. It’s been given the horrible nickname of GRB 250702B. So not the most original name, but it definitely is original in its behavior. Not only is it longer lasting than any other gamma ray burst, but it seemed to have multiple parts. It had three separate pulses.

And normally, the events that cause a gamma ray burst are kind of catastrophic. They’re caused when neutron stars merge together, or a massive star goes supernova and is destroyed. And that process is so destructive that you have this burst of gamma rays. And then the cause, the origin of it, is over. So the fact that this one lasted, had, the three separate pulses is another really weird aspect of it.

IRA FLATOW: Could it have something to do with a black hole, possibly?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: It could. There’s a few different potential causes that could have released such a weird gamma ray burst. One could be that a tidal disruption event happened. That’s the term for when you have a kind of star called a white dwarf that’s ripped apart by a certain kind of black hole. That’s a slightly more exotic scenario than one of the traditional ones.

Another possibility is that maybe this gamma ray burst comes from a black hole merging with a star, which is very, very rare. But if it were to happen, it would definitely be unleashing some very, very dramatic signs. So it’s really curious. And apparently, NASA has a press release that might shed more light on this, but it hasn’t been released yet because of the government shutdown.

IRA FLATOW: Ugh.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yes, so yet another reason.

IRA FLATOW: Oh, gosh.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Yeah.

IRA FLATOW: Let’s not go there. We’ll spend the whole–

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: [LAUGHS]

IRA FLATOW: –day on that.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: We’ve already covered the political thing of this.

IRA FLATOW: Yes, let’s– trying to get out of politics. OK, let’s wrap up with some big whale news. Is there any other kind of whale news? I mean, for the first time, there is video evidence of orcas slicing out a liver from a great white shark, Sophie?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That’s right. I mean, we’re so used to great white sharks being the big bad predators, but there is now video footage of them being taken down by a pod of orcas. And the way it works is fascinating. This is behavior that researchers have observed in the Gulf of California. And they think it’s one particular pod of orcas that has figured out this technique.

But they’ll surround a young great white shark, and they’ll flip it onto its back. And when this happens, the shark has a response that essentially makes it paralyzed. It stops moving. It lies still. And at that point, an orca can slice its side open, pull out its liver, and then the orcas can feast on that. And researchers have found drone footage of this happening.

IRA FLATOW: So they’re specifically going after the liver, not just any other part?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That’s right. I mean, shark livers are very large. They can be a quarter of their body. And they’ve very fatty. They’re full of nutritious bits. So it could be that’s what’s driving the orcas to target the liver specifically.

IRA FLATOW: Did we know about this orca behavior before?

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: We did. There has been corpses of great whites that have washed up on shore with livers missing. And in particular, there was previous incidents off the coast of South Africa. But this seems to be a separate pod, this one based in the Gulf of California. So it could be that two different groups of orcas kind of figured out how to target great whites in this way. But both groups seem to be particularly interested in those delicious livers.

IRA FLATOW: So this is the first time we have visual evidence, video.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: That’s right. We actually have a video of the orcas doing it. Yeah, we’re not just seeing the remains of the great whites. We’re seeing the whole process.

IRA FLATOW: Very impressive. You’re always impressive when you bring stuff like that on. Thank you, Sophie.

SOPHIE BUSHWICK: Thank you, Ira.

IRA FLATOW: Sophie Bushwick, science journalist and editor based in New York City.

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