The Good, The Bad, and the Musk Era of NASA

There has been a lot of commentary already about Elon Musk’s increasing influence within the incoming Trump administration in the United States. When it comes to his possible effect on NASA, it’s a heady cocktail of issues, and perhaps a SWOT analysis is what’s needed to make short work of it all. Actually, that’s not a bad idea, though I’ll forgo the traditional table.

Strengths

He really does know the space industry. If you favour crewed space exploration, this is a huge plus. The eternal human-or-machine issue regarding space exploration is safely put to rest for the time being. NASA funding for crewed flights is assured.

Cleaning up the debacle of ULA’s failures us likely to include changes to how NASA and DoD handle space flight contracting. Having someone around who understands these problems from the inside might help in getting it right the next time around.

Weaknesses

Eek. Culture clashes, entirely different visions of how to go about developing something, conception of public responsibility regarding space… there’s a list here. How this is overcome will depend on who ends up replacing Bill Nelson as NASA administrator and how close that person is to Musk.

Opportunities

Let’s take a positive spin on this, despite some glaring threats listed below. NASA needs to prevent another debacle such as we’ve seen with ULA. This might be the best ‘breath of fresh air’ opportunity for rebooting NASA in some fundamental directions. The high likelihood of the new Administrator being pro-Musk may help.

Threats

Oh dear, where to begin…

Let’s start with Musk’s foreign relations issues. In terms of NASA, I think there is little problem, unless he himself takes on the Administrator job. His ties with Russia and China affect his relations with the Department of Defense more than with NASA.

I have no feel for how his competitors will fare with the ties between Musk and NASA tightening; it is a concern. Will he end up stifling competition because he can? And then, NASA needs a housecleaning, for sure, but there is the possibility that in its reorganisation, the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater, and good people and good projects will suffer for it.

The NeXt factors

These are the relatively obvious bits that need to be written now. The harder part comes next week when I ask about Musk’s possible effect on the UK and European launch programs. Where do we go from here? I’m a bit worried.