Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk jumps as he stands on stage with Donald Trump during a presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on October 5.
AFP via Getty Images
OOver the summer, as Elon Musk increased his support for Donald Trump’s campaign, the notoriously transactional former president appeared to vow something in return for the world’s richest man. “We have to make life good for our smart people — and he’s as smart as they come,” Trump said at a rally in late July.
One thing Musk wants is for the Federal Aviation Administration to hurry up the processing of space launch licenses, which his company SpaceX says is slowing test flights of its giant Starship rocket. And then there’s the dispute between SpaceX and the Environmental Protection Agency over the impact of Starship launches on a wildlife-rich area on the Gulf Coast of Texas.
Trump, who will appoint numerous recent political appointees to the FAA and EPA, could bring quick relief on each counts and, more broadly, roll back rules within the heavily regulated space industry. That would help all space firms, but none greater than SpaceX, said Chris Quilty, founding father of space-focused financial services firm Quilty Space. At industry meetings this 12 months, competitors expressed growing fears that SpaceX would receive preferential treatment from the Trump administration, he said. “Even for those who were pro-Trump and worked within the space industry, you are like, ‘Shit, SpaceX is already killing it.’ Do they need another advantages?’ ”
This is one reason why the space industry is looking forward to Trump’s return to the White House with a combination of hope and concern.
Trump established a powerful pro-space record in his first term. It “was arguably the most effective presidential space effort since JFK,” Quilty said. Led by Vice President Mike Pence, a longtime space enthusiast who led a revitalized National Space Council, the Trump administration established the Space Force as an independent military service; pushed for increased NASA funding; launched the Artemis program, which focused the agency’s human spaceflight efforts toward a return to the Moon; and orchestrated a global treaty governing exploration and mining on the Moon, Mars and asteroids.
In his next term, industry players expect Trump’s interest in competing with China to extend spending on military and civilian space programs, starting from defending against Chinese anti-satellite weapons to keeping pace with the country’s efforts to use the moon. And if Musk gets his way, the federal government could shift its space priorities to his own long-term goal: reaching Mars. “Elon, get these rocket ships up and running because we want to get to Mars before the end of my term,” Trump said said in September.
At NASA, one in every of the largest cost-saving measures that could possibly be undertaken would also profit SpaceX.
It’s unlikely Congress would conform to that, Quilty said. Many space experts imagine determining easy methods to establish a everlasting human presence on the moon is difficult vital precursor to fly to Mars. Still, NASA could support SpaceX’s private efforts to achieve Mars. Musk said he plans to send five unmanned spacecraft to Mars in 2026.
Any big ambitions, be they for the moon or not, could possibly be counteracted if Trump convinces Congress to make good on his campaign guarantees and cut taxes and government spending. Trump has said he’ll appoint Musk to guide the federal government’s audit. The billionaire has said that as head of what he calls the Ministry of Government Efficiency, he desires to cut $2 trillion from the budget.
At NASA, one in every of the largest cost-saving measures that could possibly be undertaken would also profit SpaceX: eliminating the expensive Space Launch System, the large government rocket that’s the primary vehicle of the Artemis program, designed to return American astronauts to the moon. NASA’s inspector general estimates that a single launch costs $4 billion – a couple of sixth of the agency’s annual budget. Many space exploration advocates imagine Starship would have the option to perform the identical task for some time significantly lower cost – Musk claims a single launch will cost lower than $10 million.
SpaceX is already involved within the Artemis program – it’s developing a version of Starship that may act as a lunar lander and rendezvous with the Orion crew vehicle built by Lockheed Martin over the moon to bring astronauts to the surface. But one other government contract to interchange SLS with Starship could be lucrative.
That’s unlikely, even despite Musk’s recent position of influence. Eliminating SLS, nicknamed the Senate Launch System due to the pork this system provides, saves jobs in all 50 states (prime contractor is Boeing) — and as with all elements of the budget, Congress is the ultimate arbiter .
A more achievable option could be to start a process to transition to a commercially developed vehicle after the primary three of the six planned Artemis missions, said Todd Harrison, a defense and space policy analyst on the American Enterprise Institute. (Artemis II, a manned test flight across the moon, is planned for next 12 months.) The New Glenn rocket, being developed by billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin, could compete with Starship for that role.
SpaceX has a “flood” of applications to the FCC to extend its share of spectrum for satellite communications.
Another way Musk and SpaceX may gain advantage within the Trump administration is the transition to a GOP majority on the Federal Communications Commission. The company currently has a “flood” of applications pending with the FCC to extend the share of spectrum utilized by its Starlink communications satellites and the ability of their transmissions, expand its constellation and place satellites at lower altitudes. Quilty remarks.
In addition to maintaining or increasing funding for NASA, Trump could also support expanding the Space Force, which is currently the smallest military service with a budget of $29 billion. He said End of August that he desired to create a Space National Guard, an idea the Pentagon rejected as too expensive. But it’s unclear whether that may occur, given “huge uncertainty” about how Trump’s stated ambition to chop taxes and federal spending will affect the defense budget, Harrison said.
If the Republican Party finally ends up with a narrow majority within the House of Representatives, it will strengthen the budget hawk Freedom Caucus, which has proposed limits on the defense budget, emphasizes Harrison. And Trump himself expressed ambivalence about defense spending.
“If it’s the same budget dynamic that we’ve seen in recent years, with the Freedom Caucus insisting on spending cuts that ultimately fell on defense, then I think Space Force funding will continue to be constrained and may even be There will be further cuts from Congress,” Harrison said. “I don’t think there’s much the Trump administration could do about it.”
Regardless of the general budget, the administration will likely turn more to privatization in space as a part of its efforts to counter China, said Jeffrey Manber, an industry veteran who’s leading the hassle to construct a industrial space station at Voyager Space. “I think we’ll see that at NASA and the Department of Defense,” he said.
That could breathe recent life into quite a lot of U.S. space firms. Commercial satellite Earth remark providers have made great strides, as evidenced by the stunning images from Maxar and Planet Labs from the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But profitability was difficult to attain.
Part of the issue, analysts say, is that U.S. national security agencies have been reluctant to scale back their reliance on government systems for communications, Earth remark and tracking of satellites and orbiting objects. A May report from the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board specified“The government is concerned about the long-term reliability of commercial services, especially in acute crises.” Case in point: Musk’s decision to dam the Ukrainian military from using Starlink to attack occupied Crimea in 2022. The billionaire said he feared this is able to provoke a nuclear response from Russia.
Concerns about U.S. unreliability with Trump’s return to power, in addition to this type of unpredictability on Musk’s part, will likely prompt other countries to speed up their efforts to develop independent launch and satellite capabilities, said Manber, who recurrently meets with foreign space partners meets agencies.
“Each of them is concerned about being dependent on the United States for access to space.”
