With space exploration advocate Elon Musk working closely with President Donald Trump, it seemed for a while that NASA might not experience the same kind of upheaval that other federal agencies have.
But the recent Trump-Musk feud, and even its potential resolution, have made things uncertain for the space agency.
Eric Berger is senior space editor at Ars Technica. He says one casualty of the disagreement between Musk and Trump was the person tapped to be NASA administrator. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: I know that NASA’s been leaning pretty hard on SpaceX to complete some of its missions. How has NASA been affected so far by this new administration? Have any major projects or missions been changed or outright dropped?
Eric Berger: Nothing has been changed significantly yet, but the president’s budget proposal did make some pretty key cuts, both in human exploration and especially in scientific missions. Now those budget cuts have to be passed by Congress.
Kind of the biggest issue for the agency really has been the uncertainty. For the six months that President Trump has been in office and not having an administrator at the top has really fueled that uncertainty about where the agency is really headed.
Well, let’s talk about this nomination to lead NASA. Jared Isaacman was seen as important in the Trump-Musk falling out. What does it tell you?
Well, it tells me that someone who was really qualified to be an administrator and who I think would have done a terrific job basically got taken out because of political machinations.
Hmm, who are you referring to there?
Well, there were people in the White House Office of Personnel Management and in the White House in general who did not like Musk, who came in very heavy handed, you know, was first buddy, was making all these decisions that were kind of outside their traditional boundaries – traditional lanes.
And Musk throws his weight around, there’s no question about that. I think he angered a lot of people and so when he was kind of leaving the White House, people decided to stab him in the back on the way out and one of the ways they did that was taking out his NASA nominee.
Well, what about NASA in Congress, where Texas Sen. Ted Cruz chairs the Commerce Committee? How is that playing out?
Cruz has really emerged as a key voice in the Senate on space policy in recent years, one of the most important I would say. And so he’s going to protect Johnson Space Center’s interests.
I’m not sure that fully aligns with a healthy space program, but programs like Gateway and Orion space program are probably going to be safe under his watch.
And so that may have a lot of folks at the Johnson Space Center happy. There’s also been an increased focus on military projects for NASA. What’s known about the president’s priorities there?
You know, the rumored name to replace Isaacman as the nominee, Steve Kwast, is a former Air Force general and he has made sort of militarization of space a high priority – very interested in ensuring that we are back to the moon before China.
And so it would be a curious choice to lead a civil space agency and we’ll have to see what comes of it.
Elon Musk’s a major NASA contractor through SpaceX clearly, but what impact would canceling these contracts, as the president has threatened to do, have on the future of space exploration writ large for the U.S.? Do you think that’s really likely to happen?
I don’t think it’s likely to happen. It would be really harmful, not just for SpaceX, but I would argue more so than for the U.S. government.
It would effectively probably be the end of the International Space Station. It would delay humans landing on the moon until well into the 2030s, and the majority of military satellites now get to space on SpaceX rockets.
So SpaceX is essential to the U.S. government’s interest in space at this point, whereas SpaceX now drives the majority of its revenue from the Starlink internet constellation, which is mostly commercial. So it would be counterproductive, I would say.
Sounds like more questions than answers at this point.
Yeah, that’s right. We’re in a situation now where we don’t have a NASA administrator, we don’t have a NASA budget, and we’re not sure where the feud between the president and Elon Musk is headed.
So we’ll just have to see what happens.
