Keith’s note: Michael Altenhofen – who joined NASA from SpaceX in January 2025 as a “special “Senior Advisor to the NASA Administrator” has been named as Deputy Chief of Staff according to his LinkedIn page. If he was a ‘Special Government Employee (SGE)’ then his 130 days will be up very soon.

Keith’s note: The whole internal Administration tariff spat touches NASA rather directly. First there is “Musk lashes out at architect of Trump’s tariffs in first public comments about shock policy – then there’s “Musk “doesn’t understand” trade cheating, Navarro says“. Peter Navarro’s frequent co-author Greg Autry has been nominated to become the next NASA CFO and (former) SpaceX guy Michael Altenhofen is a senior advisor to NASA where two time SpaceX customer Jared Isaacman will soon work. Hopefully NASA can put up a firewall against this internecine bickering. Ad Astra y’all