FPI / June 13, 2025
By Richard Fisher
As the colorful political alliance of President Donald Trump and the world’s wealthiest man Elon Musk was historic in its scope and had a clear impact on the early space policy of Trump’s second term, their first week of June 2025 titanic political bust-up must not be allowed to divert one of the major strengths of the United States space program — Musk’s SpaceX company.
Options: Blue Origin’s Blue Moon, left, can put 20 tons on the Moon, while SpaceX (2nd from left) can put 100 tons on the Moon, producing a greater lead on China’s early Moon lander Lanyue, right.Cooler heads must prevail.
Musk’s wealth (about $200 million in campaign contributions) and unabashed youth-energizing star power were instrumental in carrying President Donald Trump to his second, and very rare non-sequential election victory in November 2024.
Hugely enamored of his new important friend, Trump gave Musk an almost Deputy Vice President level of authority, leading the lightning-rod-fiscally-crucial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and accepting Musk’s space entrepreneur and friend Jared Isaacman as the new Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Trump even used his Jan. 20 Inauguration Speech to endorse, for the first time as U.S. policy, Musk’s longstanding and core goal of sending Americans to Mars.
Meanwhile, gathering indications were that Isaacman would soon cancel the legacy $1 billion a shot NASA Space Launch System (SLS) Moon and Mars rocket, while shifting NASA priorities amid huge budget cuts, slightly away from building a manned architecture for the Moon, to getting to Mars.
But as their argument grew, space policy was caught in the crossfire, starting on May 31 when the White House withdrew the nomination of Isaacman as NASA Administrator, that in a June 4 interview on the “All-In Podcast” he all but attributed to the Trump-Musk fallout.
But on June 5 the verbal volleys included a not so veiled Trump threat, “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon’s government subsidies and contracts.”
Musk replied on his X platform, “In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.”
But by 9:20 pm on June 5 Musk demurred, “OK. We won’t decommission Dragon.”
While one can hope the former friends eventually resume some level of cooperation, for now there are major questions over whether Trump’s pique will be realized in some level of disruption in the NASA-SpaceX relationship.
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Despite Trump-Musk bust-up, SpaceX remains vital for U.S. space success added by Editor Two on June 13, 2025
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