MIKE GRUSS
As a SpaceX Starship rocket steered its way back to Earth Nov. 19 before ultimately landing in the Gulf of Mexico, President-elect Donald Trump watched from Texas alongside Elon Musk.
Musk is the founder of SpaceX, the space company that handles launches for NASA, the U.S. Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office. Following Trump’s election he is also the co-chair of the cheekily named commission, Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is a dog-themed cryptocurrency.
And Musk is once again a central figure, if not the central figure, at the hub of a web of complicated, sometimes contradictory, positions surrounding the U.S. government’s spending and policy on space.
He leads a company that has more than $10 billion in government contracts, and is also the face of a new body aimed at getting rid of government waste. He wants to win new space launch and satellite contracts with the U.S. Space Force and intelligence community, but his reported calls to Russian President Vladimir Putin according to the Wall Street Journal, have raised questions about national security. And his company is now accused of having a near monopoly on some space technologies, a charge he levied against United Launch Alliance a decade ago when he was trying to break into the market to launch national security satellites.
All of this comes as he’s sparred with government agencies, such as the Federal Communication Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Labor Relations Board.
Two defense analysts contacted by The Space Project said it was still unclear how Musk’s relationships and new role with the Trump administration may play out. (Musk has made a practice of not following convention. Gen. William Shelton, the former head of Air Force Space Command, once said of Musk, “Generally, the person you are doing business with, you don’t sue.”)
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