ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump may soon reach orbit. That's because one of Musk's companies, SpaceX, does a lot of work for the government. NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel is here to discuss this space opera. Hey, Geoff.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Pleasure to be here, Ari.
SHAPIRO: How does this feud get from social media up into orbit?
BRUMFIEL: Well, in a way, it was there from the start. So the same day that Trump and Musk had that goodbye press conference last Friday, Trump pulled his nomination for NASA's administrator. Now, this was a person named Jared Isaacman, and Isaacman was a really close ally of Elon Musk, who'd actually flown to space aboard SpaceX capsules. That reportedly really irked Elon. It, of course, wasn't the only factor in this feud. But space entered the chat again yesterday, with Trump threatening to terminate Musk's government contracts, many of which are through SpaceX. And then Musk said he would decommission the capsule that NASA astronauts used to get to the Space Station. That's a SpaceX capsule. Now, I should say Musk backed down pretty quickly. He's since deleted the post, but people in the space community are worried.
SHAPIRO: SpaceX is just one company, so why are they so worried? Why are the stakes so high?
BRUMFIEL: You know, it's not just any company. More than 80% of everything on Earth that went into space last year did it aboard a SpaceX rocket. That's how big they are. And of course, that capsule I mentioned - that's the only American spaceship capable of carrying astronauts. And then there's Starlink, which is this internet satellite service. The Defense Department has been paying SpaceX to launch spy satellites and use Starlink, and the umbrella system called Starshield is becoming increasingly important. So across the space sector, the government really is looking to SpaceX to do a lot of different jobs.
SHAPIRO: Well, if SpaceX is doing so many important things for the government, how disruptive could this fight be?
BRUMFIEL: My colleague Scott Neuman spoke to Lori Garver, a former deputy NASA administrator under Obama, and she said people who follow the space industry closely were already concerned about the fact that SpaceX is this very powerful private company owned by just one guy.
LORI GARVER: People in this profession have been concerned about this for several years because of SpaceX's dominance.
BRUMFIEL: At the same time, she says, she doesn't take these threats by Trump and Musk too seriously.
GARVER: Canceling SpaceX contracts as a personal vendetta wouldn't stand up in the courts, I don't believe. But neither would decommissioning services under contract by the government.
SHAPIRO: As you pointed out, Musk did delete that tweet about decommissioning the SpaceX capsule. But you've described how dependent the government is on SpaceX. How much does SpaceX need the government?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah, that's a fair question, and it's a difficult one to answer because SpaceX is a privately held company. We don't know a lot of details about their finances. I spoke to Tim Farrar. He's a space business analyst and president of a firm called TMF Associates. And he noted that this year, Musk says SpaceX is on track to make more than $15 billion in revenue. Now, we don't know exactly how much of that came from the government, but based on what he's seen, Farrar was willing to take a guess.
TIM FARRAR: I think it's plausible to estimate that the U.S. government collectively accounts for somewhere between a quarter and a third of those revenues.
BRUMFIEL: So we're talking about billions of dollars. And there's one more thing SpaceX needs from the government. It's currently trying to launch this massive new experimental rocket called Starship. That requires a huge number of regulatory approvals with each launch, and if the Trump administration wanted to, it could make that process a lot tougher and really hold things up for SpaceX and Elon Musk.
SHAPIRO: That is NPR's Geoff Brumfiel. Thank you.
BRUMFIEL: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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