KEY POINTS
- Elon Musk said SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft “immediately” because of threats by Donald Trump to cancel government contracts with Musk’s businesses.
- Musk’s announcement on his social media site X escalated a war of words with Trump that began after the Tesla CEO criticized the major tax bill being pushed by the Republican president.
- A SpaceX Dragon capsule brought two NASA astronauts back to Earth in March after they were stranded for months at the International Space Station by a Boeing Starliner capsule.
Plus without SpaceX, our only ride to space would be the Soyuz
Ariane would like a word.
I’m not aware of any human rated spacecraft being launched with Ariane. I know there were some concepts for at least Ariane 5, and it would be cool for Europe to be independent on this.
Ariane has an astronaut ferry and reentry vehicle? That’s news to me. Also: they’re more than 2x as expensive per kg to orbit.