A leaderless NASA faces its biggest-ever cuts

They reached orbit with new glenn in January. This just isn't true.

I generally agree with this sentiment, but they did reach orbit with their sole launch of New Glenn! An admirable thing, even if it took like a quarter of a century.....

At an insane cost and low launch frequency

Yeah... no. If the Golden Dome hopes to have a chance to get built (on budget), SpaceX needs to get involved.

You'd have bigger questions coming up based on the general 'how did it get to this' as well as any other companies as well as the populace being very concerned about such behavior.

The USA would get SpaceX but also have to deal with businesses getting spooked that the government can now nationalise private assets on a whim.

When that happened in Iran 1953 the CIA fostered a coup; Cuba is under embargo since the 60s triggered by Fidel nationalising sugar mills; Chile's coup in the 70s with CIA support was triggered by nationalisation of the copper mines; invasion of Panama in the 80s was from tensions with Noriega wanting to take over the canal's assets.

Venezuela's sanctions were because Chávez nationalised oil under PDVSA. The rift with Bolivia's Evo Morales was from gas nationalisation.

So if the USA just takes over someone's private company it will be absurdly hypocritical, and shatter even more the USA's international reputation, the added risk to businesses in the USA after this precedent opens will probably also be of concern.

Then any progress would also stop overnight.

they should probably toss in starlink as well.

Pretty sure his relatively quick walk back on that "joke" was due to the realization that if it was left open as a credible threat it is very likely the government would have just seized control of SpaceX immediately.

There's not really any need to charge him with anything to do that when he is making active threats to weaken national security, though its possible they might have separately gone after him.

And if the government did take that action they would have had incredibly high popular support for doing so among virtually everyone on both sides.

> you are also not allowed as an individual to sabotage the nation.

I’m not sure of this.

> criminal investigation and possibly expropiation

Criminal investigation into lying on clearance forms about drug use effectively sidelines him SpaceX’s chain of command without stealing his or anyone else’s shareholdings.

That said, it would be an authoritarian shot across the bow for Silicon Valley from this White House.

To offer a little factual background:

* The fact that SpaceX is currently the only US company with an available and reliable capacity to fly astronauts to/from the ISS is the main reason for many of the contracts, and they had this before and irrespective of Musk's political engagement.

* For other launch activities unrelated to the ISS, SpaceX offers the most cost-effective service, so again it's not unreasonable that they would win business irrespective.

* Most of SpaceX's active contracts with NASA predate Trump's second term.

NASA is about $1B of SpaceX's ~$15B revenue.

SpaceX does a LOT of commercial launch. And Starlink is growing fast.