Welcome, Jared Isaacman. We who love NASA, or at least the idea of NASA, wish you the very best in taking leadership of the great American space agency. You seem to be an agent for change and NASA sorely needs that. Its human spaceflight program, which garners most of its public attention and financial support, is dysfunctional (unsustainable as in an earlier incarnation of a failed initiative) governed more by industry contracts and special-interest politics than by any space exploration or national purpose goal. Its robotic exploration program, which has been its hallmark of achievement, discovery and pride, is under attack, diminishing absolutely at home and relatively in the world. 

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Louis Friedman is the co-founder and Executive Director Emeritus of The Planetary Society. Prior to that he was Manager of Advanced Programs and the post-Viking Mars Program at JPL.