Washington: SpaceX rockets transport American astronauts to the international space station. Its constellation of Starlink satellite sells the globe with high speed, and the company is integrated into some of the most sensitive projects in the Pentagon, including monitoring hypersonic missiles.
Thus, when President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to cancel the federal contracts of Elon Musk, the space observers drew attention.
Musk, the richest person in the world, retaliated to the fact that he went to the NASA of the capsule for crew flights – before withdrawing the threat a few hours later.
For the moment, experts say that mutual dependence should maintain a break in its own right, but the episode exposes how any break could be a disruptive.
Founded in 2002, SpaceX exceeded entrepreneurs inherited to become the dominant launch supplier in the world.
Driven by Musk’s ambition to make multiplanetary humanity, these are now the only means of NASA to send astronauts to the ISS – a symbol of cooperation after the Cold War and a test bench for deeper space missions.
Monopoly of space?
The company has completed 10 regular crew rotations in the orbit laboratory and is contracted for four others, as part of an agreement worth almost 5 billion dollars.
This is part of a wider portfolio which includes $ 4 billion from NASA for the development of starship, the new generation Megarot; Nearly $ 6 billion in the space force for launch services; And a billion dollars reported for Starshield, a network of classified espionage satellite.
If Dragon has been anchored, the United States would once again be forced to count on Russian soybean rockets for access to the ISS – as it did between 2011 and 2020, after the retirement of the space shuttle and before the dragon crew came into service.
“As part of the current geopolitical climate, it would not be optimal,” said Laura Pre -Pétazyk to AFP, space analyst.
NASA had hoped that Boeing Starliner would provide redundancy, but persistent delays – and a failed crew test last year – kept it anchored.
Even Northrop Grumman’s freight missions are now based on SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the work horse of its rocket fleet.
The situation also throws a shadow on the Artemis program of NASA.
A variant Lunar Landder of Starship is planned for Artemis III and IV, the next American moon missions. If Starship was sidelined, Rival Blue Origin could benefit from it – but the chronology would almost certainly slip, giving China, which aims to land humans by 2030, a chance to get there first, warned prepzyk.
“There are very few launch vehicles as capable as Falcon 9-it is not possible to leave as easily as President Trump could suppose it,” she said.
NASA was seemed to show that it had options.
“NASA assesses the earliest potential for a Starliner flight to the International Space Station at the beginning of 2026, the certification of the pending system and the resolution of Starliner’s technical problems,” the agency said on Friday in a statement AFP.
However, the quarrel could have an asset or an asset on space, warned prepzyk, complicating the long -term plans of NASA.
SpaceX does not fully depend on the US government. Starlink subscriptions and commercial launches explain a significant part of its income, and the company also steals private missions.
The following, with the partner Axiom Space, will transport astronauts from India, Poland and Hungary, funded by their respective governments.
Private power, public risk
But losing American government contracts would still be a major hit.
“It is such an apocalyptic scenario for both parties that it is difficult to envisage how American space efforts would fill the gap,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the aerospace security project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said AFP.
“The two parties have every reason to fill the disagreement and get back in business.”
Signs of Rift emerged last weekend, when the White House suddenly removed its appointment from the billionaire of electronic payments Jared Isaamman – an ally of near musk who stole twice in space with SpaceX – as a NASA administrator.
On a recent podcast, Isaacman said he thought he had been abandoned because “some people had ax to grind, and I was a good visible target”.
The wider episode could also revive the debate on Washington’s dependence on business partners, especially when a company occupies such a dominant position.
Swope noted that if the US government has long favored industry purchasing services, military leaders tend to prefer possession of the systems on which they depend.
“This is only another point of data that could strengthen the reasons why it can be risky,” he said. “I think the seeds have been planted in many people – that it may not be confidence.”
