Musk’s SpaceX Could Secure Billions in New Contracts Under Trump
"Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts
The boost in federal spending for SpaceX will come in part as a result of actions by President Trump and Elon Musk’s allies and employees who hold government positions. Supporters say he has the best technology.
By Eric Lipton
Eric Lipton has spent the past year writing about SpaceX and its work for the federal government.
Within the Trump administration’s Defense Department, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocketry is being trumpeted as the nifty new way the Pentagon could move military cargo rapidly around the globe.
In the Commerce Department, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service will now be fully eligible for the federal government’s $42 billion rural broadband push, after being largely shut out during the Biden era.
At NASA, after repeated nudges by Mr. Musk, the agency is being squeezed to turn its focus to Mars, allowing SpaceX to pursue federal contracts to deliver the first humans to the distant planet.
And at the Federal Aviation Administration and the White House itself, Starlink satellite dishes have recently been installed, to expand federal government internet access.
Mr. Musk, as the architect of a group he called the Department of Government Efficiency, has taken a chain saw to the apparatus of governing, spurring chaos and dread by pushing out some 100,000 federal workers and shutting down various agencies, though the government has not been consistent in explaining the expanse of his power.
But in selected spots across the government, SpaceX is positioning itself to see billions of dollars in new federal contracts or other support, a dozen current and former federal officials said in interviews with The New York Times.
The boost in federal spending for SpaceX will come in part as a result of actions by President Trump and Mr. Musk’s allies and employees who now hold government positions. The company will also benefit from policies under the current Trump administration that prioritize hiring commercial space vendors for everything from communications systems to satellite fabrication, areas in which SpaceX now dominates.
Already, some SpaceX employees, temporarily working at the F.A.A., were givenofficial permission to take actions that might steer new work to Mr. Musk’s company.
The new contracts across government will come in addition to the billions of dollars in new business that SpaceX could rake in by securing permission from the Trump administration to expand its use of federally owned property.
SpaceX has at least four pending requests with the F.A.A. and the Pentagon to build new rocket launchpads or to launch more frequently from federal spaceports in Florida and California. The F.A.A. moved this month toward approving one of those deals, more than doubling the annual number of SpaceX launches for its Falcon 9 rocket allowed at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, to 120.
And SpaceX is pushing the F.C.C. for more federal radio spectrum — its Starlink satellite service depends on radio spectrum to send signals back and forth to Earth, meaning if it gets more it can increase its profits — a move its cellular provider rivals see as a power grab. The first of those awards was approved this month, after Mr. Trump replaced the head of the F.C.C. with a new chairman, Brendan Carr, who has been supportive of Mr. Musk.
The potential new revenue stream for Mr. Musk’s company comes after he donated nearly $300 million to support the 2024 campaign of Mr. Trump as he sought a return to the White House.
Mr. Musk then persuaded President Trump to put him in charge of the cost-cutting effort. From there, as a White House employee and adviser, he can influence policy and eliminate contracts.
“The odds of Elon getting whatever Elon wants are much higher today,” said Blair Levin, a former F.C.C. official turned market analyst. “He is in the White House and Mar-a-Lago. No one ever anticipated that an industry competitor would have access to those kinds of levers of power.”
Executives at SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that Mr. Musk, as a so-called special government employee had received briefings on ethics limits including those related to conflicts of interest and would abide by all applicable federal laws.
SpaceX had built itself into one of the nation’s largest federal contractors before the start of the second Trump administration, securing $3.8 billion in commitments for fiscal year 2024 spread over 344 different contracts, according to a tally by The Times of a federal contracting database.
SpaceX was awarded billions in government contracts last year
The company has already seen a massive jump in federal contracts, largely with the Pentagon and NASA."
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