![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/skynews-spacex-rocket_7050432.jpg\")
<\/p>\nElon Musk has attacked NASA’s administrator – and claimed he isn’t smart enough to hold the top job.<\/p>\n
The billionaire’s criticism of Sean Duffy came after the space agency said it was open to using moon landers that weren’t manufactured by his company SpaceX.<\/p>\n
On X, Musk accused Mr Duffy of “trying to kill NASA”, and wrote: “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
2:16<\/p>\n
Lift-off for SpaceX’s Starship!<\/p>\n
While NASA has been planning to use SpaceX’s Starship rocket system to land on the lunar surface, proposals will now be accepted from rivals.<\/p>\n
The agency wants to return astronauts to the moon within Donald Trump’s second term and do so before China gets there.<\/p>\n
Mr Duffy had told CNBC: “We’re not going to wait for one company. We’re going to push this forward and win the second space race against the Chinese.”<\/p>\n
While SpaceX has a $2.9bn (\u00a32.2bn) contract for the Artemis III mission, it has fallen behind schedule – with Starship suffering a series of explosive failures this year.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/skynews-spacex-starship-explosion_6945842.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
0:30<\/p>\n
June: Empty SpaceX craft explodes<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Musk has defended the company’s progress, writing: “SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry.<\/p>\n
“Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole moon mission. Mark my words.”<\/p>\n
In response, Mr Duffy said: “Love the passion. The race to the Moon is ON. Great companies shouldn’t be afraid of a challenge. When our innovators compete with each other, America wins!”<\/p>\n
Mr Duffy is currently the acting administrator of NASA, but reports suggest that he wants to keep the role.<\/p>\n
Musk has previously thrown his support behind a billionaire called Jared Isaacman for the top job, who has previously flown on two private SpaceX missions into orbit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk has attacked NASA’s administrator – and claimed he isn’t smart enough to hold the top job.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-217152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}