Trump-Musk 'divorce' likely to have major effect on US Space Programme

The friendship at the heart of the US government between the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and the most powerful man in the world, US President Donald Trump has come to an acrimonious end. In a flurry of threats and insults on their respective social media platforms,, X (Twitter) and Truth Social, the once friends are now at loggerheads.The start of the row was over a budget and spending bill which was being presented before US Congress. While Trump supported Musk's attempt to pair back wasteful government spending via his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) project, in truth most of the savings were spent on tax cuts in Trump's "big beautiful bill' rather than reducing government debt. Musk had been warning that cuts had to be made to US spending in order to get the deficit and government debt under control (it has been rapidly rising for over three decades) and lashed out against this bill branding it a “disgusting abomination”. Musk was also angry that the bill ended a tax concession for electric vehicles, a measure directly affecting his holding in the publically traded Tesla car concern.President Trump retaliated by saying that he would cut all government contracts to Musk's firms, mainly Telsa and SpaceX.In the middle of this melee, Musk fired off accusations about Trump’s connection to underage sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.Musk also initially threatened to stop all Dragon flights, effectively starving astronauts aboard the International Space Station. "In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately" he said on his X/Twitter column. Nevertheless, a few hours later he rowed back on this threat, but has now called for Trump to be impeached by Congress.In truth, Musk was known to have reservations about cuts to NASA Science programme which Trump seemed intent to do, partly as a revenge against its Global Warming data. Musk was also said to be angry over the failure of the Trump Administration to carry on with the nomination of businessman and friend of Musk, Jared Isaacman for the post of NASA Administrator.Trump has the ultimate power to stop SpaceX flying via his control of the FAA. Likewise, he could remove all government and US Department of Defence launch contracts from SpaceX. However, the question would then become, who else could fly them? ULA simply does not have the capacity. Blue Origin's New Glenn is not ready yet. Both are probably more expensive to launch LEO missions on.