NASA has hedged many of its bets on SpaceX despite its questionable and overburdened owner, and as the agency’s director now suggests, it’s basically because Elon Musk runs it.
In an interview with NPR, NASA Director Bill Nelson gave a desirable and revealing answer when asked about Musk’s ownership of the spaceflight company that owns tens of billions of dollars in government contracts.
“Elon Musk’s decision-making has come under a lot of scrutiny in recent years when it comes to some of his other companies, Twitter and Tesla,” asked interviewer Scott Detrow. “Are you concerned that much of this plan is in the hands of Elon Musk?”At this point?”
“Elon Musk. . . one of the most important decisions he made, of course, was to elect a president named Gwynne Shotwell,” Nelson retorted. “She directs SpaceX. Es excellent. So I don’t have any worries. “
This isn’t the first time the NASA director and former Florida senator has expressed his feelings.
A few months after Musk bought Twitter, before disastrously renaming it “X,” in late 2022, Nelson told NBC News of relief when he discussed the acquisition with the SpaceX chairman.
“Tell me the distraction Elon might have on Twitter probably wouldn’t be SpaceX,” Nelson recalled when asking Shotwell.
In response, she told him that he didn’t harm the spaceflight company and that he had “nothing to worry about. “
“I hugged her with a smile on my face, I know she’s directing this,” the NASA director continued. “She’s running SpaceX. “
However, the former NASA deputy director commented in a revealing memoir published in 2022 that before taking over as the agency’s director, Nelson was even more anti-Musk than he is today.
In her e-book “Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age,” former deputy director Lori Garver said that while still a senator, Nelson “led the opposition” to SpaceX, which she championed while leading what has become known as the publicity team program. In a one-on-one meeting, as Garver recounted, Nelson even yelled at him to “‘get your guy Elon in line. ‘”
Despite having publicly softened on Musk, Nelson can’t help but let his animosity toward multiple bombastic scripts show, and as the head of NASA, which has invested so much in SpaceX, it’s not hard to see why.
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