on Wednesday Trump announced billionaire Jared isaacman as his nominee for NASA administrator in a truth social post Trump referred to isaacman as a quote accomplished business leader philanthropist pilot and Astronaut while citing his quote passion for space that would lead NASA quote into a bold New Era isaacman who was 41 years old founded what would later become Shift 4 payments at age 16 in his parents' basement in New Jersey after dropping out of high school which provides Payment Processing services and point of sale software to businesses Shift 4 payments now handles more than $260 billion
in transactions annually according to its website with major clients including Hilton for Seasons KFC and Arby's he also founded denen International which now owns the world's largest private fleet of military jets and trains Air Force pilots in 2011 alongside then Air Force Thunderbird stunt Squadron member Shan Gustafson isaacman sold his majority stake in denen for a nine figure sum to Blackstone in 2019 and became a billionaire the following year after he took Shift 4 payments public isaacman has traveled to space twice in missions arranged by the private space flight Polaris program he established with Elon
musk's SpaceX including the inspiration for mission that flew to Earth's orbit in September 2021 and Polaris Dawn a mission featur featuring the first ever commercial space walk earlier this year the walk which isaacman and his crew spent more than 2 years planning for was scheduled to last 2 hours but only took about 90 minutes and the trip took isaacman further into space than any human since NASA's Apollo 17 mission in 1972 ISAC men's trip was commissioned to test out new space suits communication methods and research experiments he also stated his Polaris missions will contribute to
spacex's Mission of sending humans to the moon and Mars echoing musk's call to send colonizing missions to Mars Forbes estimates isaacman is worth about $1.8 billion as of Wednesday much of his wealth comes from his 38% stake in Shift 4 payments for more on this story check out Connor Murray's article in the link in the description
