Many are fearing for the future of America's space industry as the high-profile conflict between Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump has led many to believe that NASA has been plunged into its 'biggest crisis ever'.
The political world came to a standstill last Thursday when Elon Musk and Donald Trump began verbally jousting across social media, culminating in the former making a wild claim that the president is in the Epstein files.
While rumors had been bubbling under the surface of tension between the once-inseparable pair, this eruption of conflict near-enough confirmed that they're likely to never see eye to eye again.
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That might not necessarily be an issue inside government as Musk was already set to depart from his controversial role as head of the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but the imprint of Musk and his companies across multiple key federal projects has left key departments in a tricky position - with NASA seemingly getting the worst of it.
As reported by the BBC, President Trump has threatened to withdraw all federal contracts from Musk's companies, the most of which have been awarded to SpaceX and its subsidiary Starlink, and this could plunge the government's space operations into chaos.
It's not just the International Space Station's (ISS) future replacement that's in jeopardy either, as NASA is entirely reliant on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets to resupply the ISS and they also played a key part in returning stranded astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams earlier this year.
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What's more, NASA have also planned to use Musk's Starship rocket for future space exploration missions to the Moon and eventually to Mars, which you can easily understand when observing the remarkable cost disparity between SpaceX and NASA's own options.
Only recently did Musk benefit significantly from what many branded the largest cut to NASA's budget in history, yet its increased reliance on SpaceX and its technology has left the space agency in a dangerous spot following Musk and Trump's fallout.
Experts have already warned of the dangers that Trump's catastrophic tariffs would have on the space agency, but this new turn of events might inadvertently prove to be a death knell for NASA in the near future.
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NASA isn't the only area of government that could end up suffering from the separation between Trump and Musk too, as the richest man in the world was set to play a major role in the development of the Golden Dome scheme which would provide advanced missile defense systems for the whole of America.
Starlink was also awarded key FAA and military satellite contracts in the past few months despite allegations of a conflict of interest, and they could end up being torn up and left in disarray if the president decides to go ahead with his termination threats.