Trump pick for NASA chief Jared Isaacman pledges to move space shuttle Discovery to Houston, lawmaker says
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/trump-pick-for-nasa-chief-jared-isaacman-pledges-to-move-space-shuttle-discovery-to-houston-lawmaker-says
26 Comments
Complete waste of time and money. The US is such a joke.
welp there goes any support I would have had for him
Sorry, this should be an instant disqualification for Isaacman.
Turns out Jared is no saint. Breaking up Discovery is sinful.
Not the way [our favorite war criminal](https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1995846375918244164?s=20) sees it. Hard to say for sure, because Isaacman is certatinly in the mode of “get all the votes he can” right now, so he’s likely to say whatever he can to get those votes. I seriously doubt he confirmed to Cornyn or anyone else that he’s positively on board with moving *Discovery*, but Cornyn heard what he wants to hear and ran with it. Anyone with more than two brain cells and/or an appreciation for space history knows that the whole plan is asinine.
I’ve got a feeling NASA will do whatever it can within the boundaries of the law to kick the can as far as possible down the road and hope that future bills walk back the move.
Is he going to put together a heist crew? Because as NASA administrator, and not Director of the Smithsonian, he doesn’t have the power to do this without breaking in in the middle of the night
You know… Dumb rednecks do dumb things.. you know.. like shoot up highway signs… Maybe we ought to shoot up Discovery on it’s way to Texas… You know… So it’ll
fit like a fucking glove down there.
Gotta lick the TX senators’ balls to get the nom?
Man the trump administration is garbage.
The one NASA no longer owns, so the NASA administrator has no actual say? That one where NASA transferred all rights, title, interest and ownership to the Smithsonian Institution? That one?
Amazing that this is the thing that finally made people realize this guy is a piece of shit, as though being a billionaire appointed by Trump weren’t enough.
Well I had my questions about him….
This is one of the dumbest tug of wars ever. There is no point to trying to move the shuttle and it will harm it to try
So now they want to loot blue states of artifacts? Can we all accept this is a military invasion at this point and do the right thing? You know what the right thing is…
The 85 million dollars that is used to move a national treasure could have funded a number of programs at NASA for the remainder of the current reign.
Man we are a goofy nation right now. Just an all around embarrassment
This is another stupid waste of tax payer dollars by this administration. Conservatives are spendy little bastards arn’t they.
Not sure I understand what the point is to moving the Discovery to Houston, what’s this hard-on they have for moving the shuttle?
Honestly doubt this is gonna happen. Like others have said, I think he’s saying this publicly to get the nomination. But as soon as he’s in, there will be many convenient road blocks that mean it never gets done
In order to move it you’d need to disassemble it, and it cant be disassembled without destroying it, so what you’d end up with in Houston is a patched together pile of parts that is no longer the space shuttle…
Let’s hope the Smithsonian drags their feet until the banana republic collapses and it can stay.
Can everybody please just get the memo that there is no way of moving it without destroying it?
So where’s all the “Isaacman is actually good for NASA” commenters now?
Now, who is paying for all of this? The logistics of moving Discovery are just insanely stupid to contemplate.
what is the political or financial benefit here? What is the point of this? I just don’t understand the motivation.
Admitting my bias, I have been generally in favor of his nomination as admin, but I think it might be political trickery on Isaacman’s part, or a willfully misrepresentation by the senator. Quote from the article:
> “Mr. Isaacman committed to follow Sen. Cornyn’s provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now law, to move the space shuttle Discovery in one piece from Virginia to its rightful home in Space City.”
Interpretation 1: there is literally no way to move Discovery from Dulles o Houston in one piece without either spending hundreds ofmillions knocking down a bunch of infrastructure, spending hundreds of millions recommissioning a 50 year old aircraft, or spending hundreds of millions recreating said decommissioned aircraft on a modern airframe. Isaacman leans into the “in one piece” part knowing it’s practically impossible, and it doesn’t go through on those merits.
Interpretation 2: there’s literally no provision in the bill that says Discovery specifically has to be the vehicle that’s moved, it only specifies a vehicle that’s carried humans to space. Isaacman could have just said “I’ll follow the law”, and the senator misrepresented it as him agreeing to Discovery
That being said, if I’m wrong and they decide to chop up the Shuttle, then I’ll be one of the crazy people chained to Discovery’s landing gear with a “Come and Take It” flag draped over my shoulders. The Shuttle program is part of my family’s legacy, and Discovery is intentionally preserved in as close to flight-ready configuration as possible for future research.