11 replies on “Is SpaceX Trump's Favorite Rocket Company?”

  1. While many NASA Watch readers may think that space is the most important thing in the world, if Trump is holding a meeting with IUS CEOs to talk about increasing manufacturing in the USA and Musk is the founder of an electric car company building vehicles in the US that’s got a market cap of $40B, one of the founders of Solar City, (the biggest solar panel builder/installer/leasing company) and the creator of the world’s largest factory for building Lithium batteries – also in the USA. All of these would be a bigger reason for inviting him than SpaceX and its rockets since it’s business base and potential are much smaller (see the wall Street Journal article from a few weeks back). He’s also seeking to build a new satellite constellation to provide internet services that could potentially also be much bigger. US launch vehicles and especially SLS is not likely to be even in the trade space for today’s discussion much as some might want.

      1. The satellite constellation would count as infrastructure, one of President Trumps goals. Remember, President Trump’s strongest support is in rural areas with often poor Internet access.

        Elon Musk’s constellation would be a huge benefit to those remote areas where it is difficult to even get a mobile phone signal.

        President Trump could help clear the regulatory issues related to bandwidth that such a constellation would require. The gold collar jobs that would be created building and operating such a system along with the economic development it would stimulate in rural areas would also fit with his goals.

        1. What is different about Elon’s internet plan for rural folks vs what they can get now via Hughes net that has been around for a while from DirecTV?

    2. I imagine that all of Musk’s business ventures would have been discussed to a greater or lesser extent regardless of who he was officially representing, Some people have criticized Musk for having too many fingers in too many pies, however I think right now this is working very much in his favor by giving him a lot of leverage with the new administration, Trump is looking to make his mark as soon as possible and Musk clearly has the kind of positive, can do attitude in multiple businesses that Trump will be looking to as a role model for revitalizing American businesses particularly in the manufacturing sector.

    1. The BBC reported it as “Mr Trump met executives from Lockheed Martin, Under Armour, Whirlpool, Tesla and Johnson & Johnson.” It seemed to be about keeping jobs in the country.

      1. The first several times Trump met with Lockheed Martin execs was to complain about the prices they were charging the government for F-35s …

  3. Trying to be the last person in Trump’s ear with regards to Commercial Crew, considering that the election has empowered some serious enemies of the program.

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