{"id":52548,"date":"2025-08-01T12:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/52548\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T12:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T12:57:08","slug":"elon-musks-space-monopoly-is-all-obamas-fault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/52548\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk\u2019s space monopoly is all Obama\u2019s fault."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n

In the 1950s, when the Soviets started to launch satellites into space, it caught the United States by surprise. The U.S. had to make a decision about the future of its space program. Would it try to compete with the Soviets just as an expression of the military, or would it launch a civilian program? The Eisenhower administration decided that it would launch a civilian space agency: NASA.<\/p>\n

When John F. Kennedy came into office, he was not very interested in the agency. But the Soviets successfully sent the first person into space when Yuri Gagarin completed an orbit of Earth. The same month, the Bay of Pigs invasion failed. Kennedy decided almost spontaneously that he was going to take the most ambitious plan on the NASA shelf and implement it: putting someone on the moon in 10 years. This initiative successfully captured the public imagination and demonstrated what the government can do when it has the resources.<\/p>\n

But after the Nixon administration takes over, it green-lights a fraction of the agency\u2019s \u201cwish list.\u201d And in this new era, NASA makes a series of choices in which, rather than keeping that expertise in-house, it ends up ceding all of this power to contractors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey crafted a bargain with the contractors, letting them own some of the underlying intellectual property,\u201d Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer said. \u201cNASA\u2019s engineers started to get further and further away from the actual development of the rockets and the parts and the systems themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a recent episode<\/a> of What Next, host Mary Harris spoke to Foer about how the history of NASA and its reliance on contractors paved the way for Elon Musk\u2019s space monopoly. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

Mary Harris: Tell me about Elon Musk. How does he enter the picture as a contractor with NASA?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Franklin Foer: Musk gets deposed from PayPal. He\u2019s looking to figure out his next new thing, and he\u2019d always read science fiction. He was always interested in space, but the way he tells the story, there\u2019s a moment where he\u2019s coming back from a party in Long Island and he\u2019s talking to a friend about what he wants to do next, and he says, \u201cI really want to do something in space.\u201d And he goes to his hotel, and he logs on to the NASA website, and he\u2019s shocked at how the agency doesn\u2019t have plans to go to Mars. So he gets a warehouse in suburban Los Angeles and literally just starts to build rockets.<\/p>\n

How quickly is he selling rockets to NASA?<\/p>\n

He benefits from incredible timing because NASA, in the early 2000s, is beginning to start to think about phasing out the space shuttle. But it still needs a system to transport astronauts and cargo back and forth to the International Space Station. It\u2019s desperate. Almost off the bat, before he\u2019s done very much of anything, he starts to get grants from the Pentagon, then starts to get contracts from NASA, when he hasn\u2019t even actually launched a rocket yet.<\/p>\n

But even so, there was a moment when SpaceX was kind of on the brink and didn\u2019t look as if it would survive. What changed Musk\u2019s fortunes?\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the Obama administration, Musk is really having a hard time successfully launching rockets. He\u2019s burning through huge amounts of cash. But it\u2019s at this moment that the administration decides that, rather than rely on the traditional defense contractors, it\u2019s going to try to find a way to tap into this emerging space capitalism. The Obama administration ends up giving Musk a really big contract to be that provider.<\/p>\n

We really should underline the irony of the fact that Musk was brought in earlier this year to slash government spending and fire government workers, but his ventures have been so dependent on the federal government.<\/p>\n

In my piece on NASA<\/a>, I describe this as being kind of a story out of science fiction. In every story about technology, the monster, robot, or whatever ends up spinning out of control and consuming the inventor and the people who created it. That\u2019s kind of what\u2019s happened with Musk. Having these contracts helped make him a very rich and powerful man. He turns around and uses that wealth and power in order to eviscerate the very thing that helped create him.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about where things are now. Last year, 95 percent of rockets launched in the U.S. came from SpaceX. But the company is also about satellites and telecommunications. It sounds as if Musk is really in this catbird seat. What does that mean for NASA?\u00a0<\/p>\n

We have somebody who\u2019s emerged essentially as a monopolist in a field that is essential to the security of the United States. And that type of dependence is totally dangerous over the long run.<\/p>\n

It seems as if space is incredibly important to controlling the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because of the way in which warfare has changed and the way in which communications have changed, global communications increasingly will run through space. It already does run through space for the most part, but that\u2019s the way it\u2019s all going to run. If we ever fought a war with China, it would involve a fight for domination of space. There\u2019s no question that its centrality to power has only increased in this century.<\/p>\n

It does feel as if we\u2019re beginning to see some pushback, but it\u2019s not especially strong. For instance, last September, Senate Democrats were arguing that reliance on SpaceX posed grave national security risks. That just seems fair. There\u2019s also the fact that Musk has a tenuous relationship with Donald Trump, now the president, and that may put his relationship with the U.S. government in some kind of danger. Musk personally selected the person he wanted to head up NASA, Jared Isaacman, and that guy was very publicly not given the job by Trump in the end. Can you explain what happened there and how you see that influencing Musk in his relationship with the federal government?<\/p>\n

Isaacman ran a startup, made a lot of money, had a deep interest in space, bought himself a seat on a SpaceX rocket as a space tourist, and ended up, through his holding company, investing in SpaceX. It\u2019s hard to argue that he wasn\u2019t beholden in some way, shape, or form to Musk. I think he\u2019s a smart guy and had a lot of interesting ideas. But when Musk and Trump begin to fall out, Trump decides that he\u2019s going to try to hurt Musk in the place that he knows will hurt the most, which is that he announces that he is going to withdraw Isaacman\u2019s nomination to be NASA administrator. Musk kind of takes it as the worst thing that Trump could have done to him and begins to really vent in heated ways against Trump on X.<\/p>\n

This is the first time Musk talked about Trump being in the Epstein files, right?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Exactly, which brings us to this moment in politics where we\u2019re at right now: Musk talking about creating a third party<\/a>, Trump talking about maybe deporting Musk<\/a>, who was born in South Africa. And it\u2019s crazy to me that with all of this back-and-forth and with Trump being Trump and his desire to really inflict damage, that even despite all of that, the government doesn\u2019t have recourse. Trump actually can\u2019t take revenge on Musk because the cost for the United States would be too high.<\/p>\n

Just because there\u2019s no ready replacement for what he does?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Exactly.<\/p>\n

Trump has threatened to cancel SpaceX\u2019s contracts. What would happen if that actually went forward?<\/p>\n

The\u00a0General Services Administration looked at this and determined that it couldn\u2019t do it because Musk\u2019s satellites are central to the military\u2019s ability to communicate. Also, you\u2019d have astronauts who would be stranded in the space station. Musk provides actual services to the government that are essential, and there\u2019s no place else to turn to fulfill them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Shannon Stirone
\n I\u2019ve Spent a Decade Reporting on NASA\u2014and I Know Why Trump\u2019s War on DEI Can\u2019t Possibly Work.
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump is said to be looking for a SpaceX competitor. Sen. Ted Cruz put a provision into the One Big Beautiful Bill setting aside $4 billion for Boeing\u2019s space launch system. Is that something that could move forward?\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is this other rocket that NASA is developing, but it\u2019s just not going to have the versatility that Musk has with the Falcon 9. Nobody is developing a rocket to rival Starship, which is the vessel that ultimately will be able to make its way to Mars. It\u2019s not clear that Musk is going to be able to build that, because the engineering challenges are so steep, but he\u2019s getting close.<\/p>\n

Reading your writing about Musk and NASA, I really can\u2019t tell how you feel about it. You write that NASA is in a diminished state and express frustration that the shuttle program ran these incredibly repetitive missions to the space station, but you also note that the agency displays extraordinary acumen in science and confronts the greatest mysteries of the universe. So which is it?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve always been very attracted to the Carl Sagan view of the cosmos. For Sagan, science was an enlightenment project. It was a way of helping understand ourselves and our place in the universe. And to me, the fact that the government and NASA are engaged in those projects feels profound and important and a public good and something that the private sector is never going to be able to replicate. I look at the broader Trump war on expertise, on science, and on the production of knowledge. I see NASA\u2019s vulnerability as being both representative and just a tragic casualty of this assault. Culturally, we\u2019ve drifted to a point where, unfortunately, the public doesn\u2019t care enough that we have these extraordinary resources doing things on behalf of \u201call mankind,\u201d as was NASA\u2019s slogan.<\/p>\n

But we love watching people rocket into space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yeah. There\u2019s this very primitive part of our brain that likes powerful rockets in the same sort of way we like muscle cars. And that to me is very hollow. That\u2019s just an empty fetishization of something that\u2019s not even that sophisticated of an engineering problem.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[8833,11,718,79,193],"class_list":["post-52548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-barack-obama","tag-elon-musk","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}