Jared Isaacman, Trump’s choice to direct NASA, interviewed on Moon Plans and Elon Musk

NASA will favor the sending of American astronauts to March, President Trump’s candidate to lead the space agency told a Senate committee on Wednesday.

This has led to thorny exchanges between the candidate – Jared Isaamman, the director general of the SHIFT4 Payments payments processing company, who is a close partner of Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX – and republican members and democrats of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transport Committee. They wondered about the future of the international space station as well as Arthis, the current effort of NASA to return astronauts to the moon.

“I don’t think we have to trade difficult here,” said Isaamman. “I think we can in parallel with these efforts and make almost impossible.”

Mr. Isaacman shared the hearing Wednesday with Olivia Trusty, a candidate to be a member of the Federal Communications Commission. During his testimony, Mr. Isaacman avoided direct answers to a number of questions while saying several times that the space agency could work to send astronauts to the moon and in March in its current budget of 25 billion dollars.

“NASA was built to make almost impossible,” said Isaacman.

Ted Cruz, a republican of Texas who chairs the committee, gave Mr. Isaamman a conference on the Bipartite law which dictates the priorities of NASA, reading the party which declares that Mars would be the destination after the Moon. The Johnson Space Center, which manages most of the NASA space flight programs, is in the state of Mr. Cruz.

“When legislation uses the word, it designates a compulsory obligation,” Cruz told Mr. Isaacman.