NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, the former CEO of Shift4 Payments Inc. (FOUR), has thrown his full support behind Elon Musk and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX) — and he's not being shy about it. In a recent appearance on the Moonshot podcast, Isaacman made it clear that when it comes to space-based compute capacity, betting against Musk is a losing game.

Isaacman called the artificial intelligence race "extremely healthy" for NASA, and he's particularly bullish on SpaceX's plan to build orbital data centers. "If Elon and SpaceX are betting on this, there is no reason to believe this will not come into existence," he said. The NASA chief added that one should "never bet against an extremely well-capitalized Elon."

Isaacman also highlighted the importance of SpaceX being well-capitalized, noting that it's a good thing for NASA's partners. He expressed no doubt that SpaceX engineers, with Musk at the helm, will make orbital data centers a reality.

But the endorsement didn't stop there. Isaacman emphasized that SpaceX is absolutely critical to NASA's goal of establishing a permanent presence on the moon. "We can't do it without them," he said flatly. He went on to call Musk the "greatest entrepreneur and engineer in recent history."

Musk has been talking up orbital data centers for a while now. Most recently, he said SpaceX is preparing to build the technology as soon as next year. The company has already unveiled its AI1 satellites, purpose-built to carry out compute in orbit as part of the Starmind constellation.

Meanwhile, SpaceX just completed the 13th flight test of its flagship Starship rocket from Starbase, Texas. Musk noted that the launch had much higher acceleration than previous tests — intentional, as the company was testing the rocket's heat shields.

As for the stock, SpaceX shares were down 1.23% to $112.10 during overnight trading on Monday.