{"id":29123,"date":"2025-06-06T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T00:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29123"},"modified":"2025-06-06T00:26:50","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T00:26:50","slug":"how-nasa-would-struggle-without-spacex-if-trump-cancels-musks-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29123","title":{"rendered":"How NASA Would Struggle Without SpaceX if Trump Cancels Musk\u2019s Contracts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If President Trump cancels the contracts for Elon Musk\u2019s private spaceflight company, the federal government would struggle to achieve many goals in orbit and beyond.<\/p>\n

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In 2006, a small, little-known company named Space Exploration Technologies Corporation \u2014 SpaceX, for short \u2014 won a NASA contract to ferry cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

At that moment, SpaceX had not yet launched anything to orbit and would not succeed until two years later with its tiny Falcon 1 rocket. But since then, the Elon Musk-founded company has become the linchpin of all American civilian and military spaceflight.<\/p>\n

It started in 2010 with the launch of the first Falcon 9 rocket. By 2012 the launcher was sending cargo to the space station.<\/p>\n

NASA money helped finance the development of the Falcon 9, and SpaceX capitalized on the NASA seal of approval to entice companies to launch their satellites with SpaceX.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It became the Southwest Airlines of the rocket industry, selling launches and hauling satellites into orbit at a lower price than most other rockets then available.<\/p>\n

That story repeated during the Obama administration when SpaceX won a contract to take astronauts to the space station, which it did for the first time in May 2020 during the first administration of President Trump.<\/p>\n

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If President Trump cancels the contracts for Elon Musk\u2019s private spaceflight company, the federal government would struggle to achieve many goals in orbit and beyond.In 2006, a small, little-known company named Space Exploration Technologies Corporation \u2014 SpaceX, for short \u2014 won a NASA contract to ferry cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.At that moment, SpaceX had not yet launched anything to orbit and would not succeed until two years later with its tiny Falcon 1 rocket. But since then, the Elon Musk-founded company has become the linchpin of all American civilian and military spaceflight.It started in 2010 with the launch of the first Falcon 9 rocket. By 2012 the launcher was sending cargo to the space station.NASA money helped finance the development of the Falcon 9, and SpaceX capitalized on the NASA seal of approval to entice companies to launch their satellites with SpaceX.It became the Southwest Airlines of the rocket industry, selling launches and hauling satellites into orbit at a lower price than most other rockets then available.That story repeated during the Obama administration when SpaceX won a contract to take astronauts to the space station, which it did for the first time in May 2020 during the first administration of President Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29125,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29123"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29126,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29123\/revisions\/29126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}