Over the summer, as Elon Musk was ramping up support for Donald Trump ’s election campaign , the famously deal-making former president appeared to promise the world’s richest man something in return. “We’ve got to make life better for our smart people, and he’s as smart as you can get,” Trump said at a rally in late July.
One thing Musk wants: the Federal Aviation Administration to speed up its processing of space launch licenses, which his company SpaceX says is slowing the cadence of test flights for its massive Starship rocket . And then there are SpaceX’s clashes with the Environmental Protection Agency over the impacts of Starship launches on a wildlife-rich area on the Gulf Coast in Texas.
Trump, who will parachute a raft of new political appointments to the FAA and EPA , could bring quick relief on both counts and, more broadly, roll back rules in the heavily regulated space industry. That would help all space companies, but none more so than SpaceX, said Chris Quilty , founder of the space-focused financial services firm Quilty Analytics. At industry meetings this year, competitors expressed growing concerns that SpaceX would receive preferential treatment from the Trump administration, he said. “Even if you were pro-Trump and you’re in the space industry, you’re thinking, ‘Holy crap, SpaceX is rocking.’ Do they need some extra advantage? ’”
It’s part of the reason the space industry is viewing Trump’s return to the White House with a mix of hope and fear.
Trump built a strong pro-space record in his first term. “It was arguably the most impactful presidential space effort since JFK ,” Quilty said. With Vice President Mike Pence , a longtime space enthusiast, leading a revived National Space Council, the Trump administration established the Space Force as an independent military service ; pushed for increased funding from NASA; launched the Artemis program , which refocused the agency’s human spaceflight efforts toward a return to the moon; and orchestrated an international treaty governing exploration and mining on the moon, Mars, and asteroids.
In his next term, industry players believe Trump’s interest in competing with China will increase spending on military and civilian space programs, ranging from defending against Chinese anti-satellite weapons to keeping pace with the country’s efforts to exploit the moon. And, if Musk has his way, the administration could shift its space priorities toward its own long-term aspiration: getting to Mars. “Elon, get those rockets going because we want to get to Mars before I’m out of office,” Trump said in September.
Congress is unlikely to agree to that, Quilty said. Many space experts believe that figuring out how to build a sustained human presence on the Moon is a necessary precursor to going to Mars. Still, NASA could provide some support for SpaceX’s private effort to get to Mars. Musk has said he plans to send five unmanned spacecraft to Mars by 2026.
Any grand ambitions, for the moon or otherwise, could be thwarted if Trump convinces Congress to follow through on his campaign promises to cut taxes and government spending. Trump has said he would task Musk with leading an effort to audit the government. The billionaire has said he wants to cut $2 trillion from the budget as head of what he has called the Department of Government Efficiency .
At NASA, one of the biggest cost-saving moves that could be taken would also benefit SpaceX: scuttling the expensive Space Launch System , the giant government-owned rocket that is the prime vehicle for the Artemis program, which is slated to return American astronauts to the Moon. NASA’s inspector general has estimated that a single launch costs $4 billion , about one-sixth of the agency’s annual budget. Many space exploration advocates believe Starship could do the same job for much less money; Musk claims a single launch will cost less than $10 million.
SpaceX is already involved in the Artemis program: It’s developing a version of Starship that would function as a lunar lander, rendezvousing with the Lockheed Martin -built Orion crew vehicle on the moon to carry astronauts to the surface. But another government contract to replace SLS with Starship would be lucrative.
That’s unlikely, even despite Musk’s newfound position of influence. Eliminating the SLS — dubbed the “Senate Launch System” for the benefits the program provides — supports jobs in all 50 states (its prime contractor is Boeing ), and, as with all budget items, Congress is the ultimate decision-maker.
It would be more feasible to begin a transition process to a commercially developed vehicle after the first three of six planned Artemis missions, said Todd Harrison , a space and defense policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. ( Artemis II , which will be a crewed test flight around the Moon, is scheduled for next year.) The New Glenn rocket , being developed by billionaire Jeff Bezos ’s space company Blue Origin , could compete with Starship for the role.
Another way Musk and SpaceX would benefit from the Trump administration is through a transition to a Republican majority on the Federal Communications Commission. The company currently has a “deluge” of applications pending with the FCC to increase the share of the spectrum used by its Starlink communications satellites and the power of their transmissions, as well as to increase the size of its constellation and place satellites at lower altitudes, Quilty notes.
In addition to maintaining or increasing funding for NASA, Trump may also favor expanding the Space Force, currently the smallest of the military services with a $29 billion budget. He said in late August that he wanted to establish a Space National Guard, an idea opposed by the Pentagon as too expensive. But it’s unclear whether that will happen, given the “enormous amount of uncertainty” about how Trump’s stated ambition to cut taxes and federal spending will affect the defense budget, Harrison said.
If the GOP ends up with a slim majority in the House , it would strengthen the budget-friendly Freedom Caucus , which has proposed restrictions on the defense budget, Harrison notes. And Trump himself has been ambivalent about defense spending.
“If it’s the same budget dynamic we’ve seen over the last several years, with the Freedom Caucus pushing for spending cuts that end up going to defense, then I think Space Force funding will continue to be constrained and we could even see additional cuts from Congress ,” Harrison said. “I don’t think there’s much the Trump administration can do to counter that.”
Regardless of the overall budget, the administration is likely to lean more toward privatization in space as part of its efforts to counter China, said Jeffrey Manber, an industry veteran who is leading an effort to build a commercial space station at Voyager Space . “I think we’ll see that at NASA, we’ll see that at the Department of Defense,” he said.
This could breathe new life into a number of American space companies . Providers of commercial Earth-observing satellites have made great strides, as evidenced by the stunning images that Maxar and Planet Labs provided of the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But profitability has been elusive.
Part of the problem, analysts say, has been a hesitancy by U.S. national security agencies to reduce their reliance on state-owned systems for communications, Earth observation and tracking satellites and orbiting objects. A May report by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board said: “The administration is cautious about the long-term reliability of commercial services, particularly during an acute crisis.” Case in point: Musk’s decision to block the Ukrainian military from using Starlink in 2022 to launch an attack on occupied Crimea. The billionaire has said he feared that would trigger a nuclear response from Russia.
Concerns about U.S. unreliability with Trump back in power , as well as that kind of lack of foresight on Musk’s part, are likely to prompt other countries to accelerate their efforts to develop independent satellite and launch capabilities, said Manber, who meets regularly with foreign space agencies. “They’re all concerned about being dependent on the U.S. for access to space.”
