BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — Hours after a social media feud erupted between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, the fallout is still being felt.
For days leading up to the exchange, Musk who recently left the White House, criticized the president’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.”
At one point, Musk referred to it as an abomination. Trump countered with a threat to save money by terminating Musk’s governmental subsidies and contracts.
After which, Musk said SpaceX would begin decommissioning its Dragon Spacecraft immediately.
He would later walk that one back. On Friday, Don Platt, an associate professor of space systems at Florida Tech, said, “I don’t think anyone knows really what the next hour could bring, even, but I think that when we’re talking about things that are so critical as national security, space, billions of dollars, overall, I think that I suppose we could say cooler heads will prevail.”
Eyewitness News learned that if SpaceX decided to immediately decommission the Dragon Spacecraft, the company could find itself in default of its NASA contract, and could potentially be sued for unperformed work and the cost of seeking alternate transportation. But there aren’t too many other options.
“Ten, 15 years ago, SpaceX was suing because they were not being given a chance to bid on the things that ULA had or that DOD was putting out. And then they got that claiming, oh, it was a monopoly. Well, now the Boeing Starliner is probably never going to fly again. So that is not an option. You could probably get rides in a Soyuz. There probably will be a couple more astronauts going up, but that is, depending on Russia for anything right now, is not a smart thing to be doing, “ said NASA Watch founder Keith Cowing.
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