‘There is deep concern’: Nasa, Pentagon, push for SpaceX alternatives in wake of feud fallout

A dispute over SpaceX triggers Nasa urgency to find new launch providers. Photo / Getty Images

Nasa and Pentagon officials moved swiftly this past week to urge competitors to Elon Musk’s SpaceX to more quickly develop alternative rockets and spacecraft.

That came after United States President Donald Trump threatened to cancel SpaceX’s contracts and Musk’s defiant response.

Government officials were especially stunned after Musk responded to Trump with a salvo of his own: SpaceX would stop flying its Dragon spacecraft, a move that would leave the space agency with no way to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station.

Musk later recanted his threat. But it alarmed officials at Nasa, which entrusts SpaceX with the lives of its astronauts, and at the Pentagon, which relies heavily on the company to launch its most sensitive satellites.

The worried reaction within space and national security agencies highlights the risks of the Government’s heavy dependence on SpaceX for crucial tasks, including classified missions.

SpaceX, with billions of dollars in government contracts, flies people and cargo to the ISS, launches satellites for the Pentagon and develops satellites used by intelligence agencies.

The concerns are compounded by the fact that its competitors have been slow to catch up, leaving SpaceX’s dominance largely unchallenged and the Government with few options.

This account is based on interviews with a dozen people in industry and government who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly about internal deliberations.

One Nasa official said that watching the feud between Trump and Musk play out on social media on Friday at first was “entertaining”.

But once Musk called for decommissioning Dragon, “it turned really terrifying”.

There was a similar reaction in the Pentagon, where a person said staff officers “looked at each other and said, ‘oh, it’s not funny anymore.’ There was a realisation that we’re not watching TV. This is a real issue.”

Musk’s behaviour has worried Nasa officials before.

In 2018, Nasa ordered an investigation into SpaceX’s safety culture after Musk appeared to take a small hit of marijuana on the Joe Rogan podcast.

But his sudden threat on social media to cut off Nasa’s access to the orbiting space station, which has cost Nasa some US$100 billion ($1.6b) over its lifespan, “crossed a line”, one former space agency official said.

“When you realise that he’s willing to shut everything down just on an impulse, that kind of behaviour and the dependence on him is dangerous … I can tell you there is deep concern within Nasa.”

The rift between Musk and Trump was also fuelled by the White House’s withdrawal of Jared Isaacman’s nomination to be Nasa administrator. Isaacman had flown to space twice with SpaceX and was seen as closely aligned with Musk.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

Since Friday’s exchange, at least three commercial space companies, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, have been contacted by government officials about the status of their rockets and when they might be available for government missions, according to four people familiar with the inquiries. (Bezos owns the Washington Post.)

Officials at Sierra Space, which is developing a Dream Chaser spaceplane that could deliver cargo to the space station, were in a meeting with Nasa officials as the Trump-Musk feud was getting under way.

“Sierra Space stands ready to ensure uninterrupted support for the International Space Station,” Fatih Ozmen, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement to the Post.

He added that “Nasa mentioned to us that they want diversity and do not want to rely on a single provider”.

Dream Chaser “is in final testing and integration at Kennedy Space Centre,” Ozmen said. “We are working closely with Nasa leadership to fly the vehicle later this year.”

The company is also working on a variant of Dream Chaser to carry astronauts, he said, “which Nasa is studying”.

Musk’s declaration also rattled staffers on Capitol Hill.

A key congressional committee asked about the status of Boeing’s Starliner space capsule vehicle, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry.

Nasa intends to use Starliner to fly crews to the space station with SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.

The spacecraft is years behind schedule, however, and during its first human spaceflight mission to the ISS last summer, it ran into so many problems that Nasa decided it was unsafe to return to the crew with Boeing.

With Musk threatening to end Dragon, the congressional aide wanted to know when Starliner would be ready to fly again. In recent months, Nasa has said little about the status of Starliner.

In response to reporters’ questions, the agency issued a statement on Saturday saying that it is planning for a Starliner flight to the space station “in early 2026, pending system certification and resolution of Starliner’s technical issues”.

Nasa is still evaluating whether the capsule would fly with astronauts on board or with cargo only.

Even though he later recanted, Musk’s threat to curtail Nasa’s use of Dragon could be damaging to a company that has been one of the Government’s most trusted partners, said Todd Harrison, a defence analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

“It’s almost like an embargo of the space station,” he said. “Musk was saying he is going to cut Nasa off from its own laboratory in space.”

Harrison said the threat was reminiscent of Musk’s refusal to activate the Starlink Internet system so that Ukraine could carry out an attack on Russian forces in 2022.

That decision also prompted an outcry that the nation’s defences should not be in the hands of a single person or company.

Given that SpaceX has experience operating its Starlink Internet satellite constellation, it had been considered to be a natural choice for Trump’s proposed Golden Dome missile defence shield, which would rely on swarms of satellites in orbit.

However, Musk’s threat was so impulsive that it will undoubtedly rattle defence officials, Harrison said, who would not look favourably on the “idea that the nation’s missile defences could be held hostage to the twittering whims of Elon Musk”.

For Nasa’s astronauts, Musk’s social media post “got very personal” because it could impact their ability to fly, said Garrett Reisman, a former Nasa astronaut who previously worked at SpaceX.

“We shouldn’t overreact to a fit of pique on social media. But when your hopes and dreams are tied up in this, you can’t help but think, ‘Oh my goodness am I going to fly in space?’”

The Pentagon has recently made an effort to broaden the military and space industrial base, allowing for competition to drive down cost and increase innovation. The Space Force last year released a strategy that said the service would seek to avoid “overreliance on any single provider or solution”.

To allow more companies to vie for lucrative space contracts, the Pentagon recently created two “lanes” of launch competitions.

Lane one allows new entrants to bid on individual contracts to launch satellites that are smaller and not as vital. Lane two would be reserved for more powerful and proven rockets that would hoist satellites that cannot risk failure.

SpaceX, however, has continued to dominate those missions.

Its Falcon 9 rocket launches at an unprecedented cadence, while those of its competitors, including the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and Rocket Lab’s Neutron, are still largely unproven.

New Glenn has launched just once; Vulcan twice; Neutron not at all.

And even before Musk’s social media posting, the Pentagon publicly expressed worry about the pace of Vulcan’s development even though it has won certification to fly national security missions.

In a statement to the House Armed Services Committee last month, US Space Force Major General Stephen Purdy said that contractors like ULA must “establish a culture of accountability, and repair trust deficit to prove to the [Service Acquisition Executive for Space] that they are adopting the acquisition principles necessary to deliver capabilities at speed, on cost and on schedule”.

From a legal and practical standpoint, the threats by the President and Musk would be difficult to carry out, said procurement specialists.

If either the Government or the company opted out, they would face major financial penalties, government procurement experts said. And if the contractor pulled out, it could affect its ability to win future contracts.

Still, some had warned about Musk’s foray into politics and the consequences for his companies.

In an interview last year, New Zealand’s Peter Beck, the chief executive of Rocket Lab, which is seeking to compete for national security launch contracts, predicted that Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now X, and time at Trump’s side could end up hurting his businesses.

“It certainly makes people uncomfortable,” he said at the time. “At the end of the day, if you’re delivering important national security missions, the buck stops with the CEO.”