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Jared Isaacman wants simultaneous missions to the moon and

Mars

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No contact with Elon Musk on how to run NASA, Isaacman

said

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Space Launch System, Orion capsule fastest way to get to

the

moon, Isaacman says

(Adds exchange on Musk contacts, quote on SLS)

By David Shepardson and Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's

nominee to lead NASA, entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, faced

questions from senators on Wednesday about his ties to Elon Musk

and how he would balance Trump's focus on reaching Mars with the

U.S. space agency's flagship moon program.

Isaacman, CEO of payment processing company Shift4 Payments ( FOUR )

, is a close partner of Elon Musk's SpaceX who has flown

to space twice as a private astronaut on the company's

spacecraft.

Isaacman would not answer a question about whether Musk was

in the room when Trump offered him the job of NASA

administrator.

The billionaire is in Washington for a confirmation hearing

before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and

Transportation in which conflicting views on the moon and Mars

as a destination for U.S. astronauts were front and center.

If confirmed, Isaacman, 42, would oversee 18,000 employees

and a budget of roughly $25 billion, focused heavily on

returning astronauts to the moon's surface as part of a program

called Artemis. Trump started the program during his first term.

Senator Ted Cruz, whose state of Texas includes NASA's

Houston-based Johnson Space Center, pressed the nominee on his

moon program views, noting intense competition over the moon

with China, which aims to send its own astronauts there by 2030.

"I am hard pressed to think of a more catastrophic mistake

we could make in space than saying to Communist China, 'the moon

is yours. America will not lead,'" Cruz said in his opening

statement.

But the president and Musk, who spent $250 million in

support of Trump's presidential campaign and pushed for

Isaacman's nomination, have become fixated on Mars as a national

priority, raising questions about NASA's moon program for which

billions of dollars have been committed.

"I absolutely want to see us return to the Moon... we don't

have to make a binary decision of Moon versus Mars," Isaacman

said, adding that NASA can do simultaneous Moon and Mars

missions.

When asked if he supports NASA's Space Launch System rocket,

a multibillion dollar pillar of the moon program, Isaacman did

not offer explicit support, but said the rocket is part of the

current plan and that he wants to see the Artemis 2 crew get to

the moon. Isaacman has previously criticized SLS as

"outrageously expensive."

"I do believe it's the best and fastest way to get there,"

he later said of SLS and Orion, the multibillion dollar Lockheed

Martin ( LMT )-built crew capsule that sits atop SLS.

"I don't think it's the long term way to get to and from the

moon and to Mars with great frequency, but this is the plan we

have now and we've got to get this crew around the moon and the

follow on crew to land on the moon," he added.

Asked if he has had any contact with Musk on how he would

run NASA, Isaacman said "not at all," and that his loyalty is to

NASA, not contractors such as SpaceX - "they're the contractors,

NASA is the customer. They work for us, not the other way

around."

CONTRACTS WITH SPACEX

SpaceX has roughly $15 billion worth of NASA contracts,

offering the agency its only U.S. ride for astronauts to space

and a moon lander that will land crews on the moon later this

decade.

Isaacman also told senators he does not see why the

International Space Station, the 25-year-old science lab in

space, should be deorbited before the current plan of 2030 -

when NASA hopes to replace it with private space stations.

Musk has called for the station to be deorbited in 2027 to

focus on Mars, a surprise position that angered Cruz, according

to three people familiar with his thinking. SpaceX has a

contract to deorbit the ISS in 2030.

The four astronauts assigned to NASA's Artemis 2 mission -

which involves a fly-by of the moon in 2026 before a subsequent

moon landing mission - had front row seats in the hearing.

As a Musk ally and astronaut on novel SpaceX missions,

Isaacman would reinforce NASA's strategy of depending on private

companies for accessing space as a commercial service - a model

that threatens space programs held by established contractors

like Boeing ( BA ) and Northrop Grumman ( NOC ), the two main

builders of SLS.

Isaacman's background has won him the endorsement from a key

industry group representing more than 85 space companies as well

as 28 former astronauts.

While NASA's last two leaders were seasoned politicians who

proved effective in navigating the agency's funders in Congress,

Isaacman has no political experience, though during the hearing

he cast his unusual background as an advantage.