President Donald Trump's NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman, is going all-in on the administration's vision for space exploration. During a Fox News interview on Sunday, the former Shift4 Payments Inc. (FOUR) CEO laid out plans that sound like science fiction but are apparently very much the agenda.

The Nuclear Option

Isaacman didn't hold back in his praise for Trump's new space policy, calling it "the most ambitious and exciting" since President John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon in the early 1960s. The centerpiece? A permanent moon base where astronauts can chase "scientific and economic" opportunities.

But here's where it gets really interesting: "We're gonna build nuclear spaceships," Isaacman declared. These nuclear-powered vehicles would be the key to making Mars missions actually feasible, cutting travel time and opening up possibilities that conventional rockets simply can't match.

Artemis Takes Center Stage

When the conversation turned to the Artemis 2 mission, Isaacman revealed that it's about more than just orbiting the moon. The mission represents the opening salvo in a broader campaign to establish that moon base and deploy rovers capable of mining helium-3 on the lunar surface. He's predicting NASA will send astronauts around the moon "in the first half of this year."

The mission will push astronauts past the moon to test the Orion spacecraft and conduct "manual piloting exercises" in deep space. Think of it as a dress rehearsal for Artemis 3, which will actually land astronauts on the lunar surface.

The Road to Mars

Isaacman made clear that reaching Mars isn't just aspirational talk. He highlighted the critical role of commercial space companies in making it happen, specifically calling out Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin (which showed off its updated New Glenn rocket in late 2025), and Rocket Lab Corp (RKLB).

SpaceX has been particularly vocal about its timeline, positioning its Starship rocket as the vehicle that will get us there. The company is targeting cargo missions to the Moon by 2028 and Mars by 2030, with Starship as the centerpiece.

Isaacman circled back to nuclear power as the linchpin for Mars travel. "We gotta start making investments in Nuclear power in space," he emphasized. Interestingly, Musk has pushed back on nuclear energy advocates, favoring solar power as the better energy source instead. So even among the Mars enthusiasts, there's some disagreement on how exactly we're getting there.