Only one chance in this lifetime…
Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos, I couldn’t resist a cell phone video of Earthset. You can hear the shutter on the Nikon as @Astro_Christina is hammering away on 3-shot brackets and capturing those exceptional Earthset photos through the 400mm lens. @AstroVicGlover was in window 3 watching with @Astro_Jeremy next to him.
I could barely see the Moon through the docking hatch window but the iPhone was the perfect size to catch the view…this is uncropped, uncut with 8x zoom which is quite comparable to the view of the human eye. Enjoy.
Congratulations to NASA and the crew of Artemis II. A lot of effort over five Administrations and an ending with a picture perfect splashdown…
Reid, Victor, Christina & Jeremy are the best and together even better! Onward & Upward!
Jared Isaacman dropped out of high school at 16 and started a company in his parents' basement with $10,000 his grandfather gave him. Tonight he's on the deck of a Navy ship, waiting to welcome four astronauts home from the moon.
That basement company is now Shift4 Payments. It processes over $200 billion a year in credit card transactions, about a third of all restaurants, hotels, and casinos in the U.S. Went public in 2020. He ran it as CEO from age 16 until he stepped down to take over NASA last year.
He also co-founded Draken International, which ran a fleet of over 100 retired fighter jets whose entire job was playing the enemy in combat training for U.S. Air Force and NATO pilots. He sold it to Blackstone for over $100 million.
He has over 8,000 hours in the cockpit and can fly more than a dozen types of military jets. He personally owns a MiG-29, a Russian fighter that tops 1,500 mph, which he bought from the estate of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It's the only one in private American hands. In 2009, he flew around the entire planet in a small Cessna jet in 61 hours and 51 minutes, a world record, to raise money for Make-A-Wish.
In 2021, he paid for and commanded Inspiration4, the first all-civilian spaceflight. Four people with no astronaut training, three days orbiting Earth, $250 million raised for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Then in 2024, he went back up on Polaris Dawn and floated outside the spacecraft, held to it by a 12-foot cable, in the first spacewalk ever done by someone outside a government space agency. That same flight reached 870 miles above Earth, farther than any human had been since the last Apollo crew in 1972.
He took over as NASA's 15th administrator in December 2025. In his first three months, he redirected $20 billion away from a planned space station around the moon and toward building a permanent base on the moon's surface.
Right now he's aboard the USS John P. Murtha, about 50 miles off San Diego. The capsule carrying the Artemis II crew is going to hit the atmosphere tonight at around 25,000 mph. If the heat shield holds (it took damage on its last unmanned test), if the parachutes open, four astronauts splash down at 8:07 PM ET after a 694,000-mile trip around the moon. And the person waiting for them has been to space twice, walked outside a spacecraft, owns the only Russian fighter jet in private American hands, and started his first company as a teenager in his parents' basement. His call sign is "Rook."
Day 1 of #ISTC25 was phenomenal — powerful insights, inspiring speakers, and groundbreaking conversations! 🚀
See you in a few hours for Day 2. The journey continues. 🌍✨
We wish @RookIsaacman good luck and great success. NASA needs an administrator who puts the institution and its missions before ego, favoritism, and politics.
It's time Isaacman gets the job.
@Titans_Space@nealx1
@TaylorT69420 Anyone interested in @Titans_Space Industries' roadmap and timelines can read this post:
Update for 2025 and Beyond: How Titans Space Industries Is Accelerating the Future of Space Exploration and Innovation by Decades
https://t.co/E0L4ElvyRh
@JamesHenkel05@SciGuySpace The Titans Spaceplane is based on the Star-Raker concept. How much in development costs and time is that in terms of savings for TSI?
https://t.co/DW4hnBy7xk