Can the Musk-Trump feud ground NASA?

ON JUNE 5, AS THE FEUD BETWEEN ERSTwhile besties President Trump and Elon Musk escalated, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, "The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!"

- BY JEFFREY KLUGER

About 90 minutes later, in a post on X, Musk clapped back: “In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.”

Not long after that post went wide, Musk quietly deleted it. Later that evening, an X user posted to Trump and Musk, “This is a shame this back and forth. You are both better than this. Cool off and take a step back for a couple days.” Minutes later, Musk responded, “Good advice. OK, we won't decommission Dragon.”

That defused the immediate emergency, but questions remain about how dependent America’s space efforts are on the whims of mercurial billionaires. Could Musk ground the nation? Could a stroke of Trump’s Sharpie hobble SpaceX? The short answer in both cases is maybe, but not likely.