SpaceX is best known for its high-profile crewed missions to the International Space Station and its ambitious Starship program. But the U.S. has become increasingly reliant on the company for critical and sometimes secret space operations. This relationship is now jeopardized by the escalating feud between SpaceX founder Elon Musk and President Trump.
The ongoing dispute highlights the deep interdependence between the U.S. government and SpaceX. Trump has threatened to cut SpaceX's federal contracts. Musk fired back by saying that his company would decommission its Dragon capsule, which is currently America's only means of transportation to the space station. He later deleted the original tweet.
During the Obama administration, Lori Garver served as deputy administrator of NASA and she actively championed partnerships between the space agency and SpaceX. At that time, Musk's rocket company was struggling to prove it could reliably send satellites into orbit. Garver calls the war of words between Trump and Musk "really disconcerting."
"When Elon shot back bringing SpaceX into it, I think that was strategically a mistake," she says. "It just highlights for government leaders the risk in having a prime large aerospace and defense contractor run by one individual."
During Garver's tenure at NASA, SpaceX was viewed as an underdog in the satellite launch business, trying to stand out against United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture formed to provide launch services to the government and comprising aerospace heavyweights Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
But SpaceX's powerful Falcon rockets changed that dynamic, according to Laura Forczyk, owner of the space consulting firm Astralytical. The big shift occurred when SpaceX put considerable money and effort into perfecting an innovative system to soft-land the rocket's booster stage for refurbishment and reuse. This innovation increased launch frequency and reduced costs, which made SpaceX more attractive to the Pentagon.
Forczyk said the Defense Department "began to rely more on SpaceX because of that increased launch capacity as well as the lower bid when it came to launch contracts."
Today, SpaceX dominates both the U.S. and global launch markets. According to BryceTech, a private analytics firm, SpaceX launched 83% of all spacecraft worldwide last year.
The Defense Department has also come to rely heavily on SpaceX's Starlink global satellite internet service, with about 50 military commands now using it, according to Defense News. In 2021, SpaceX also signed a classified $1.8 billion contract with the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office to launch a network of satellites designed to create a government-owned encrypted version of Starlink for military use on future battlefields.
Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates, a space consultancy, says the U.S. would find it challenging to move away from Starlink, which requires dozens of launches to put its network of satellites in orbit. While other companies aim to compete with Starlink for Defense Department business, "it's proving very difficult for those others to catch up," he says.
Russia's war in Ukraine has highlighted the potential danger of having a single powerful individual like Musk in control of a critical technology such as Starlink. The SpaceX CEO has repeatedly threatened to cut off Kyiv's access to the satellite network.
Garver credits SpaceX with securing government contracts by consistently "underbidding, overdelivering, performing, and beating out the competition." She says during her time at NASA, the agency's approach was to award multiple contracts for the same mission to avoid overreliance on a single provider. Even so, Garver says, SpaceX, "got less money to do more — and went earlier, more often, and succeeded."
That has meant that rocket company's Crew Dragon, originally intended as a backup to Boeing's Starliner for trips to Earth orbit, ended up leaping forward in development. It has since become NASA's main transport to the space station, while Starliner has struggled. On a crewed test mission last year, a malfunction with Starliner's thrusters forced a months-long delay in bringing two astronauts back from orbit. The two ultimately came home aboard a SpaceX Dragon.
Garver says this situation validates NASA's multiple-contract strategy.
"It's why we have multiple cargo providers and why Boeing's Starliner, despite delays, still matters."
If Musk were to stop making Dragon capsules available for flights to the space station, in theory, NASA might have to revert to relying on Russia to provide Soyuz rockets for transport, as it did for nine years following the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011 until the first crewed SpaceX mission in 2020. But this could be risky given the current geopolitical environment, consultant Forczyk says.
A lunar-lander version of SpaceX's Starship is at the center of efforts to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972 as part of NASA's Artemis program. Nevertheless, Starship has already experienced multiple launch and reentry failures, making it unlikely to meet NASA's goal of landing on the Moon in 2027 as part of the Artemis 3 mission. The giant rocket has yet to reach orbit, let alone complete the complex refueling operation necessary for a journey to the Moon and eventually Mars.
Meanwhjile, Musk has expressed doubts about the desirability of returning to the Moon. In a post on X, he called the moon mission a "distraction," suggesting that traveling to Mars — a long-time goal of Musk's — was the real priority.
Trump's original nominee for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, a close ally of Musk, had traveled to space twice aboard a SpaceX capsule. Isaacman had promised to get the agency working on a crewed mission to Mars. Trump withdrew his nomination shortly after Musk left the government, reportedly further infuriating the tech billionaire.
Without Starship to land on the Moon, there will "have to be significant changes to the plans there and probably a substantial postponement of the planned timetable for Artemis," Farrar says.
But there is a Plan B. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company is developing a moon lander known as Blue Moon.
"NASA could modify the contract and assign Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander to Artemis 3," but Blue Origin has a long way to go in development too, Garver says.
Ultimately, neither Trump nor Musk could easily act on their threats to end SpaceX contracts.
"Canceling SpaceX contracts as a personal vendetta wouldn't stand up in the courts," Garver says regarding Trump. Similarly, Musk's suggestion to halt resupply and re-crewing of the space station would be impractical, she adds.
While NASA has yet to select the crew for the Artemis 3 landing, Garver thinks the space agency is unlikely to cancel the mission due to Musk's blustering or Starship's repeated delays.
Garver says anyone selected for the moon landing "recognizes this is years away and the Starship lander is just one of a number of pieces of that architecture that aren't yet ready to go."
Copyright 2025 NPR
