Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, on Thursday said his company SpaceX would begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft after he engaged in an extraordinary public fallout with Donald Trump who had threatened to cancel government contracts with Musk’s businesses.
“In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,” Musk posted on the social media platform X, which he owns.
A few minutes earlier Trump had posted on Truth Social – the media platform that he owns – that he might cancel huge lucrative contracts with Musk’s businesses, which include the SpaceX company that is building a fleet of rockets.
The dragon capsule worked though? You may be thinking of starliner, which is Boeing.
I’m thinking of Starship.
So Elon’s cancelling the thing that works, but not the giant firecracker?
The thing that works is currently being used by NASA to get astronauts to and from the ISS. The threat was aimed at messing up NASA’s current plans after Donald threatened to toss the SpaceX contracts.
There no contract for starship yet. They may have gotten a grant for future development or something. But it’s only a potential tool for the Artemis missions in the future
Seems like running a national space program that depends on a private company run by a petulant child is a bad idea.
NASA has always relied upon contractors to do all the actual construction.
And luckily that permanent child just owns it. They made him step much farther away from running it after his smoking weed live on a podcast.
presumably well thought out business decisions arent made spontaneously out of rage from a twitter fight.
While on ketamine.
It’s the “You can’t fire me! I quit!” response to Trump threatening his NASA contracts.
Seems more like the cutting off his nose to spite his face.
To be fair, that will teach his dumb stupid face a lesson it deserves.
Seems more like the cutting off his nose to spite outer space.
Indeed. And Shotwell will likely remind Elon they can’t do that and stay solvent. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s uncancelled something he’s decided to throw out.
I wouldn’t be surprised if starlink was enough to keep them solvent