6.11.2024

If NASA’s current schedule sticks, the next American president will oversee the first moon landing since the Apollo era and preside over the agency’s plans for sending astronauts deeper into the solar system. Elon Musk, the CEO of the world’s most successful private-spaceflight company, has made clear who he thinks that president should be. This fall, he declared that Kamala Harris would doom humankind to an earthbound existence, whereas Donald Trump would fulfill SpaceX’s founding dream of putting people on Mars. Trump seems equally enthusiastic about Musk’s space plans. “Elon, get those rocket ships going, because we want to reach Mars before the end of my term,” he said on the campaign trail.

A Trump presidency could push America toward a new era of space travel, and Trump has demonstrated his enthusiasm for space exploration—as president, he created the Space Force. Otherworldly ambitions, though, can come with earthly costs.

The American government is already relying on SpaceX to fly astronauts to space, provide satellite internet for operations across the U.S. military, and help realize its plans to return to the moon. A Trump administration could increase that codependence, further embedding SpaceX—and its CEO—in the framework of American governance. NASA has always used private companies to fulfill its greatest ambitions, but Trump could essentially outsource the imagination driving the future of American spaceflight to Musk.

No matter who is president, Musk will play a role in America’s future in space. NASA has hired SpaceX to develop a version of Starship, its biggest rocket yet, to land astronauts on the lunar surface by the end of the decade. The agency will also likely rely on the vehicle to make its Mars dreams a reality in the decade after that. SpaceX has launched Starship prototypes steadily over the past year from its South Texas base, and seeks to dramatically increase its annual cadence of test flights, from five to 25. But according to Musk and other company officials, the Federal Aviation Administration, which is responsible for approving rocket launches, is holding them back from testing Starship and sending commercial payloads into orbit as quickly as they’d like. FAA officials have defended the agency’s process for launch evaluations, saying that SpaceX—whose Starship project is unlike any previous space program—must meet safety requirements before every takeoff.

A newly reinstalled President Trump, who once asked NASA to hurry up and squeeze in a Mars mission before the end of his first term, would presumably take no issue with a pressure campaign against his own FAA to remove regulations. He could instruct the agency to relax its rules, even give Musk some (official or unofficial) power over it. Trump has promised to instate Musk as the head of a government-efficiency commission. Such an appointment could lead to all sorts of conflicts of interest, and perhaps even unprecedented results. “You have potentially a high-level senior adviser in the person who owns the largest and most capable private space company in the world, with a direct line to the president of the United States, pitching a Mars mission in four years,” Casey Dreier, the chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, who has written extensively about the politics of America’s moon and Mars efforts, told me. “We don’t have historical examples of that.” (NASA could not make agency officials available for an interview before this story was published.)

Unshackled from the FAA, SpaceX could run dozens of Starship missions in the next few years, which is exactly what NASA needs in order to start dropping astronauts on the moon and beyond (and achieving those feats before rival nations do). Space travel is an itch that the United States, under any president, seems unable to resist scratching. “We do it because we can—and because we probably will not be satisfied until we do,” John Logsdon, a space historian, once told me. Musk has long argued that the future of the human species depends on reaching Mars. Government officials may not use the same vocabulary as Musk, but they have bought into his vision nonetheless. In recent years, former top officials in NASA’s human-spaceflight program have taken jobs at SpaceX.

In the meantime, though, more SpaceX flights—and more power for Musk—could be messy, or even dangerous. As Starship development has quickened in recent years, SpaceX’s rate of worker injuries has outpaced the industry average. Federal and state regulators say that SpaceX has disregardedenvironmental rules at its launch site in South Texas, violating the Clean Water Act by releasing industrial wastewater during launches. (The company has said that the water is not hazardous.) And perhaps most concerning, where a Trump administration could clear hurdles for SpaceX, it could also embolden the company’s chief executive, a man whose conduct is often questionable at best. Recent reports alleging that Musk engages in regular conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin led NASA’s chief to call for an investigation.

NASA has previously acted in response to comparatively mild Musk antics; in 2018, the agency ordered a review of workplace culture at SpaceX, which was preparing to fly NASA astronauts on a brand-new spacecraft, after Musk smoked weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast. The Trump administration didn’t stand in the way of that investigation, but that was before Musk became the former president’s No. 1 donor and certified hype man. A Putin-related inquiry under a second Trump administration is unlikely. Trump, who has praised the Russian dictator and refused to vocally support Ukraine, would sooner hop on a three-way phone call with Musk and Putin. Already, with SpaceX’s growing inventory of Starlink internet satellites, Musk has tremendous control over how the world communicates, and has maintained Starlink’s independence from the U.S. government and others. But if President Trump asks Government-Efficiency Adviser Musk to, say, shut off Starlink services over a NATO ally or a nuclear power, one wonders how Musk would react.

A Harris administration would, of course, approach Musk differently. Musk has publicly mused about why no one has attempted to assassinate Harris and suggested that Harris would order his arrest if she wins the presidency. That’s far-fetched, even if a Harris administration might be less reluctant to investigate the billionaire’s ties to Putin. And no matter who takes the White House, to spurn SpaceX would mean hurting the U.S. space program. Boeing bungled its recent mission to ferry astronauts to the ISS so badly that SpaceX has at least a temporary monopoly over astronaut launches from American soil.

The American space program needs Musk, and he knows it. Without SpaceX, NASA astronauts could fly around the moon a dozen times and never touch down: NASA’s own rocket is supposed to get them into lunar orbit, but Starship is their ride to the surface. That leverage raises a worrying—if unlikely—possibility. Earlier this year, Musk told my colleague Damon Beres that he is willing to accept a Harris presidency, but only “if, after review of the election results, it turns out that Kamala wins.” Dreier suggested this hypothetical scenario: “What if Elon Musk just declared SpaceX won’t work with the Harris administration if he considers it illegitimate?” (Musk is certainly laying the groundwork for election denial—it appears to be his primary preoccupation on X these days.) Although such a decision would put SpaceX in breach of various contracts and cause tremendous turmoil, it would also make clear who controls American spaceflight.

Quelle: The Atlantic 5.11.2024