Article Elon Musk’s mission to take over NASA—and Mars?

[C C]

https://www.wsj.com/business/elon-musk-n..._permalink

INTRO: After spending months and more than $250 million campaigning to elect President Trump, Elon Musk made a call late last year to help roll out his plan for humanity’s path beyond Earth.

He reached his friend Jared Isaacman with a request: Would Isaacman become the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration? He told Isaacman, the payments entrepreneur who has flown to orbit with SpaceX and invested in the company, that they could make NASA great again and work toward their shared ambition of getting humans to Mars, according to people briefed on the conversation.

Soon after the call, Trump announced Isaacman’s appointment.

Musk, the world’s richest man and now a top adviser to the president, has extraordinary influence on budgets, personnel and technology systems across federal agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates commercial spaceflights at SpaceX, Musk’s rocket and satellite-internet company.

Through the new Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has cut budgets, laid off staff and ditched programs. He also has DOGE employees reviewing the operations and personnel of agencies that have investigated Musk’s companies, including the Federal Trade Commission and Environmental Protection Agency.

It is at NASA, though, where Musk is making the biggest shift in an agency’s priorities to align them with his own—both financially and personally. He is working to recast its programs, reallocate federal spending and install loyalists to aid his decadeslong goal of sending people to Mars.

He has also worked to win backing from Trump by telling the president that getting people to Mars would shine his legacy as a “president of firsts,” according to people briefed on the conversations. The ambition could have a potentially huge impact on SpaceX, which has emerged as the dominant space technology and operations company globally and is already one of NASA’s biggest contractors.

The White House plans to propose killing a powerful Boeing-built rocket designed for NASA to launch astronauts to the moon and beyond in a coming budget plan, according to people briefed on the plans. Canceling the vehicle, called the Space Launch System or SLS, would potentially free up billions for Mars efforts and set up a clash with members of Congress who support it.

SpaceX officials have told people outside the company in recent weeks that NASA’s resources will be reallocated toward Mars efforts... (MORE - details)

ALTERNATIVE SOURCE (MSN): https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolog...r-AA1C0DA9

[Yazata]

I wouldn't trust the Wall Street Journal about this. They are exactly what their name suggests, the voice of the old-style and currently fading prep-school, ivy league, wall-street, country-club Republicanism. They are  stoutly 'globalist' and loathe Trump's currently ascendent MAGA Republicanism with its tariffs and its emphasis on reindustrializing America as opposed to outsourcing everything to China in pursuit of short-term profit (but longer-term doom). MAGA represents a huge bloc of actual voters, while old Republicanism has no voter base except among capitol hill lobbyists, which probably includes Boeing.

So it isn't surprising to see the WSJ try to spin a very hostile narrative out of imagination and unnamed "sources" who have supposedly been "briefed on the conversations", New York Times style.

What probably happened is that Trump asked Elon who Elon felt would be a good choice for NASA Administrator. Who better to ask? And before he gave Jared Isaacman's name to Trump, Elon asked Jared if Jared would be willing to do it. That shouldn't be spun into some dark plot by Elon to "take over" NASA for his own and SpaceX's benefit. That's just fantasy.

Elon and Trump both share the ambition to make human space exploration great again. Trump and Bridenstine displayed it during Trump's first term before Elon joined Trump, so it isn't something that Elon is suddenly pushing on Trump now in hopes of appealing to Trump's ego as the WSJ suggests. Again, that's hostile fantasy.

Certainly the SLS is threatened with the chopping block, which has probably aroused Boeing's lobbyists. But that isn't some dark conspiracy of Elon's, since people have been making the argument for years that the current Artemis architecture is too expensive and unfit for purpose, if the purpose is creating a permanent human presence on the Moon. Struggling to maintain an SLS launch cadence of once a year won't sustain a Moon base.

That said, we don't really know where Jared stands regarding the SLS. Assuming that he won't find some use for it and will strive to kill it is just speculation at this point.

And if he did that, there's no guarantee that Elon and SpaceX would be the first to profit. Elon has already said that SpaceX is concentrating on Mars and that the Moon is just a distraction from the Mars effort. Basically, a permanent presence on the Moon is NASA's goal, while a permanent presence on Mars is SpaceX's.

So if Jared's NASA went ahead and cancelled the SLS, Blue's New Glenn and ULA's Vulcan would be major players in replacing it. SpaceX would probably bid Starship for some of the Moon contracts, as they have already done, but they wouldn't want to expend so many company resources on the Moon that it detracts from the Mars effort. In other words, Elon won't 'own the Moon'.

He might arguably 'own Mars' if NASA Mars talk remains nothing but aspirations while SpaceX produces a credible Mars effort with actual flight hardware. Of course the Chinese will have something to say about that. Mars is a whole planet and SpaceX can't keep others off. The only thing keeping them off Mars is their own lack of ambition to go there.

[Syne]

"Through the new Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has cut budgets, laid off staff and ditched programs."

No he hasn't. He's made recommendations but DOGE has no power itself.