Proposed NASA Chief Jared Isaacman Sees Millions Of Spacefarers Ahead

Billionaire aeronaut Jared Isaacman, one of the world’s great space philanthropists and now set to head NASA, says he envisions millions of space sojourners lifting off from Planet Earth in times ahead.

After piloting twin SpaceX capsules to test technologies pivotal to future Mars flights, Isaacman told me in an interview that these demo missions are laying the foundation for a Big Bang-like explosion in space travel waiting in the wings.

During his recent, second orbital flight, Isaacman and the two SpaceX astronaut instructors he invited onto the Polaris Dawn expedition tested out the next-generation spacesuits that the California-based aerospace juggernaut has been developing at lightning speed.

A top-notch navigator – of flying machines ranging from jet fighters to SpaceX’s Dragon capsules – who holds a degree in aeronautics from Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University, Isaacman co-funded and collaborated on honing the EVA suits during the intensive two-year countdown to his Polaris mission.

Spacesuits for millions of Moon and Mars travelers

Yet he says his test flights with the spacesuits – including while conducting the planet’s first spacewalk by an independent astronaut circling the globe at 17,000 miles per hour – were mere stepping stones toward a future marked by millions of flyers lifting off as humanity is transformed into “a spacefaring civilization”.

As Homo sapiens becomes a multi-world species, he says during the interview, millions of spacesuits have to be perfected for the Moon and Mars travelers of the future.

His channeling funds into fine-tuning SpaceX’s astro-gear, which features futuristic helmets with instrument readings and other info digitally projected onto golden-colored visors, is only a small part of Isaacman’s incredible philanthropy.

His first flight circumnavigating the Earth, called Inspiration4, altogether raised $250 million for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital: Isaacman and his wife personally donated $125 million, and during the Polaris mission he renewed the call for other Good Samaritans across the globe to contribute to St. Jude, whose world-leading researchers provide treatments to children with life-threatening illnesses regardless of their ability to pay.

He has also donated seats on both SpaceX orbital treks he’s commissioned so far, with one ticket on the Inspiration4 mission presented, gratis, to Hayley Arceneaux, a young physician assistant at St. Jude whose life had been saved by its doctors nearly two decades earlier.

Yet he deflects any accolades for his astounding largesse, including the funds he’s contributed to speed up SpaceX’s Moon- and Mars-bound flights of the future.

Spearheading the NewSpace Revolution

“We’re all lucky to be on these exploratory Dragon flights,” Isaacman says.

“There is an incredible group of 14,000 people at SpaceX who are pushing forward these super-speed advances, including on the series of spacesuits.”

“I play just a small part in the much much bigger SpaceX effort.”

He says all of the aerospace breakthroughs demonstrated on the Polaris flight “support making humanity a multi-planetary species.”

Inviting SpaceX’s top two astronautics experts onto the flight, he says, will enable them to fine-tune and advance SpaceX’s stellar astronaut training program.

Recreating Mars in the Earth’s image

Like SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Jared Isaacman backs terraforming Mars, or using planet-scale geo-engineering techniques to restore the Red Planet’s ocean and atmosphere, and to warm its equatorial dunes to foster a habitable environment.

On the eve of Isaacman’s last Dragon flight, Musk told his 200 million followers on the platform X that he aims to launch a flotilla of uncrewed Starships to Mars when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens in late 2026, to be followed with the liftoff of Starships piloted by astronauts two years later.

These first human explorers would touch down on the orange-red Martian deserts between July and October of 2029, depending on their launch date.

When Isaacman takes up his post as NASA Administrator, nominated to that position by President-elect Donald Trump, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is likely to undergo a rapid-fire transformation on sending astronauts to Mars.

Until now, NASA has never sketched out a clear roadmap – or a timetable – for human exploration of the now-frozen orb.

Jared Isaacman and the first human missions to Mars

“Jared Isaacman will be pivotal to pushing forward the first human missions to Mars,” says space exploration visionary Rick Tumlinson.

Tumlinson, who has long advocated for human settlements in what he calls “Free Space,” and on the Moon and Mars, via his EarthLight Foundation, told me in an interview that as soon as Isaacman takes charge at NASA in 2025, he should begin revamping the agency to map out and super-charge preparations for the first humans ever to descend on another planet – before the 2020s end – with a 2029 landing.

While previewing his astonishing masterplan to create the first technopolis on Mars – during a talk at his Starbase launch center earlier this year – SpaceX creator Elon Musk said he aims to rocket one million inter-planetary nomads to Mars via his Starship super-capsules – launched in expanding waves over the course of twenty years – with colossal fleets set to leave Earth orbit each time the trans-Mars transfer flightpath opens.

Each Starship is designed to host 100 passengers, and 10,000 flights will bring the first million Martians to their New World homeland as inventors and technologists, world-builders and dome designers, and robots and AI agents collectively remake Mars in the Earth’s image.

“We are opening up the last frontier by settling on other planets,” Isaacman says.

Setting up human outposts across celestial destinations – initially in the solar system – would ensure the longevity of the human race, he muses.

“Mars is just the beginning.”

Meanwhile, Isaacman has already commissioned the first flight of the Starship, when it is cleared to host human pilots and passengers, but hasn’t yet finalized the destination of this mission.

In an amazing feat of precision aeronautical engineering, the colossal booster dispatched on the Starship’s fifth flight test returned to the Starbase launch tower and hovered in mid-air as twin titanic arms grasped the rocket. SpaceX is now counting down to the ship’s seventh experimental flight.

“Becoming a space society” and discovering a “perfect world”

“The Starship is a multi-generational leap in spaceflight technology to take people to the Moon and to Mars,” Isaacman says, and then beyond.

“Becoming a space society and beginning to move onto other worlds,” he says, will not only push forward space discoveries, but also trigger profound changes that ripple across the Earth’s civilization.

That, in turn, might spark the globe’s eight billion citizens to realize what a “perfect world” they live in, he predicts.