The Trump-Musk Fight Could Have Huge Consequences for U.S. Space Programs<\/p>\n
A vitriolic war of words between President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk could have profound repercussions for the nation\u2019s civil and military space programs<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
By Lee Billings<\/a> edited by Dean Visser<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Elon Musk (left<\/i>) and President Donald Trump (right<\/i>) seemed to be on good terms during a press briefing in the Oval Office at the White House on May 30, 2025, but the event proved to be the calm before a social media storm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Kevin Dietsch\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n For several hours yesterday, an explosively escalating social media confrontation between arguably the world\u2019s richest man, Elon Musk, and the world\u2019s most powerful, President Donald Trump, shook U.S. spaceflight to its core.<\/p>\n The pair had been bosom-buddy allies ever since Musk\u2019s fateful endorsement<\/a> of Trump last July\u2014an event that helped propel Trump to an electoral victory and his second presidential term. But on May 28 Musk announced his departure<\/a> from his official role overseeing the U.S. DOGE Service. And on May 31 the White House announced that it was withdrawing Trump\u2019s nomination<\/a> of Musk\u2019s close associate Jared Isaacman<\/a> to lead NASA. Musk abruptly went on the attack against the Trump administration, criticizing the budget-busting One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now navigating through Congress, as \u201ca disgusting abomination<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Things got worse from there as the blowup descended deeper into threats and insults. On June 5 Trump suggested on his own social-media platform, Truth Social, that he could terminate U.S. government contracts<\/a> with Musk\u2019s companies, such as SpaceX and Tesla. Less than an hour later, the conflict suddenly grew more personal, with Musk taking to X, the social media platform he owns, to accuse Trump<\/a>\u2014without evidence\u2014of being incriminated by as-yet-unreleased government documents related to the illegal activities of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing<\/a>. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Musk upped the ante further in follow-up posts in which he endorsed a suggestion for impeaching Trump<\/a> and, separately, declared in a now deleted post that because of the president\u2019s threat, SpaceX \u201cwill begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.\u201d (Some five hours after his decommissioning comment, tempers had apparently cooled enough for Musk to walk back the remark in another X post<\/a>: \u201cOk, we won\u2019t decommission Dragon.\u201d)<\/p>\n Dragon is a crucial workhorse of U.S. human spaceflight. It\u2019s the main way NASA\u2019s astronauts get to and from the International Space Station (ISS) and also a key component of a contract between NASA and SpaceX to safely deorbit<\/a> the ISS in 2031. If Dragon were to be no longer be available, NASA would, in the near term, have to rely on either Russian Soyuz vehicles or on Boeing\u2019s glitch-plagued Starliner spacecraft<\/a> for its crew transport\u2014and the space agency\u2019s plans for deorbiting the ISS would essentially go back to the drawing board. More broadly, NASA uses SpaceX rockets to launch many of its science missions, and the company is contracted to ferry astronauts to and from the surface of the moon as part of the space agency\u2019s Artemis III<\/i> mission<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s and Musk\u2019s retaliatory tit for tat also raises the disconcerting possibility of disrupting other SpaceX-centric parts of U.S. space plans, many of which are seen as critical for national security. Thanks to its wildly successful reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the company presently provides the vast majority of space launches for the Department of Defense. And SpaceX\u2019s constellation of more than 7,000 Starlink communications satellites<\/a> has become vitally important<\/a> to war fighters in the ongoing conflict between Russia and U.S.-allied Ukraine. SpaceX is also contracted to build a massive constellation of spy satellites<\/a> for the DOD and is considered a leading candidate for launching space-based interceptors envisioned as part of Trump\u2019s \u201cGolden Dome\u201d missile-defense plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n Among the avalanche of reactions to the incendiary spectacle unfolding in real time, one of the most extreme was from Trump\u2019s influential former adviser Steve Bannon, who called on the president to seize and nationalize SpaceX<\/a>. And in an interview with the New York Times,<\/i> Bannon, without evidence, accused<\/a> Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen, of being an \u201cillegal alien\u201d who \u201cshould be deported from the country immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n NASA, for its part, attempted to stay above the fray via a carefully worded late-afternoon statement<\/a> from the space agency\u2019s press secretary Bethany Stevens: \u201cNASA will continue to execute upon the President\u2019s vision for the future of space,\u201d Stevens wrote. \u201cWe will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President\u2019s objectives in space are met.\u201d<\/p>\n The response from the stock market was, in its own way, much less muted. SpaceX is not a publicly traded company. But Musk\u2019s electric car company Tesla is. And it experienced a massive sell-off at the end of June 5\u2019s trading day: Tesla\u2019s share price fell down by 14 percent, losing<\/a> the company a whopping $152 billion of its market value.<\/p>\n Today a rumored d\u00e9tente phone conversation between the two men has apparently been called off<\/a>, and Trump has reportedly said<\/a> he now intends to sell the Tesla he purchased in March in what was then a gesture of support for Musk. But there are some signs the rift may yet heal: Musk has yet to be deported; SpaceX has not been shut down; Tesla\u2019s stock price is surging back from its momentary heavy losses; and it seems NASA astronauts won\u2019t be stranded on Earth or on the ISS for the time being.<\/p>\n Even so, the entire sordid episode\u2014and the possibility of further messy clashes between Trump and Musk unfolding in public\u2014highlights a fundamental vulnerability at the heart of the nation\u2019s deep reliance on SpaceX for access to space. Outsourcing huge swaths of civil and military space programs to a disruptively innovative private company effectively controlled by a single individual certainly has its rewards\u2014but no shortage of risks, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/static.scientificamerican.com\/dam\/m\/10a99301073651fa\/original\/musk_and_president_trump_in_oval_office.jpg?m=1749237369.554&w=600\")
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