{"id":230880,"date":"2025-10-21T21:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T21:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/230880\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T21:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T21:39:07","slug":"elon-musk-feuds-with-us-transportation-chief-in-social-media-posts-2-digit-iq-spacex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/230880\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk feuds with US transportation chief in social media posts: \u20182 digit IQ\u2019 | SpaceX"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk<\/a> attacked Sean Duffy, the US secretary of transportation, on Tuesday in a series of posts on X, accusing him of trying to \u201ckill NASA\u201d, suggesting he should be fired and calling him \u201cSean Dummy\u201d. The posts intensified a long-running feud between Duffy, who is also the acting head of Nasa, and Musk, whose company SpaceX is central to the US space program.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s tirade against Duffy followed a statement from the transportation secretary<\/a> on Tuesday that Nasa would reopen contracts for the agency\u2019s Artemis mission to land humans on the moon, which SpaceX had previously secured. Duffy said that SpaceX had fallen behind on its timelines. Duffy suggested the contract might go to another billionaire\u2019s rocket company, Jeff Bezos\u2019s Blue Origin.<\/p>\n

Duffy\u2019s remarks and Musk\u2019s backlash are part of a broader fight over the direction of US space travel and a months-long battle over who will take over leadership of Nasa. The clash was a central part of Musk\u2019s dramatic exit from the White House earlier this year, after the Trump administration<\/a> rejected his preferred Nasa pick, Jared Isaacman, and selected Duffy as the space agency\u2019s acting chief.<\/p>\n

The debate over who should lead Nasa has been revived in recent weeks, according to the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, with Isaacman and Duffy both vying for the job. Trump denied Isaacman the position earlier this year, citing his donations to the Democratic party, calling him<\/a> a \u201cblue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before\u201d. Duffy has lobbied for Nasa to be placed under the authority of the transportation department, the Journal reported.<\/p>\n

Musk, who is no longer part of the administration, but is in the process of a detente with Trump following their public blowup, has used his platform to criticize Duffy and his reported proposals to fold Nasa<\/a> into the transportation department.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe person responsible for America\u2019s space program can\u2019t have a 2 digit IQ,\u201d Musk posted on Tuesday on X, the social media platform which he owns.<\/p>\n

\u201cSean Dummy is trying to kill NASA!\u201d Musk said in another post.<\/p>\n

The SpaceX<\/a> CEO also posted a poll referencing Duffy\u2019s past as a champion lumberjack speed-climber, asking: \u201cShould someone whose biggest claim to fame is climbing trees be running America\u2019s space program?\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk has long favored Isaacman, his ally and a billionaire investor in SpaceX, to lead the US space agency. Musk\u2019s company is Nasa\u2019s largest private contractor, and the agency has been critical to its growth, providing SpaceX with billions of dollars in funding. SpaceX won a $2.9bn contract in 2021<\/a> to provide the lunar lander for the Artemis 3 mission.<\/p>\n

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The Artemis program, which dates back to Trump\u2019s first term, aims to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972. Its initial goal was to land on the Moon\u2019s south pole in 2024 and establish a human presence by 2028 with the eventual intention of reaching Mars, one of Musk\u2019s long-held ambitions. Nasa has repeatedly delayed Artemis, however, and its next step to orbit four astronauts around the moon is now set for no earlier than 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk attacked Sean Duffy, the US secretary of transportation, on Tuesday in a series of posts on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-230880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}