Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, on Thursday said his company SpaceX would begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft after he engaged in an extraordinary public fallout with Donald Trump who had threatened to cancel government contracts with Musk’s businesses.
“In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,” Musk posted on the social media platform X, which he owns.
A few minutes earlier Trump had posted on Truth Social – the media platform that he owns – that he might cancel huge lucrative contracts with Musk’s businesses, which include the SpaceX company that is building a fleet of rockets.
Uh no they can’t if the US government doesn’t let them.
What are the courts going to stop them from seizing the equipment.
SpaceX is a privately owned company. I’m absolutely certain the US government doesn’t own any of their intellectual property. If they chose to, they could move the entire operation to any other country, and US courts could probably do nothing to prevent it.
The SCOTUS is useless as it’s in the back pocket of the Donvict, and it’s America we are talking about, you know they like to replace entire governments, if they don’t want the tech leaving it just will not be allowed.
All the Cheeto in charge has to do is say national security risk or Elons now a terrorist blah blah blah, the most powerful nation on earth will do whatever it feels like to protect itself.
Except that it is still America, and the government seizing private property…especially from a billionaire…is straight up “socialism” as far as most Americans are concerned. I have a feeling that might not go over as easily as people think.
The right wing has no actual ideology except power. They will happily nationalize anything that is mildly convenient, moans of “socialism” vanishing like the morning mist once Fox hands out talking points for a few days.
I’d just like to note, Elon doesn’t have majority stake in SpaceX any more. He only owns 42% as of last year. I doubt the other investors will be so keen to burn all these bridges, but I guess we’ll see.
Not so sure. Stuff like ITAR exists to prevent exactly that. The us could also declare SpaceX to be some kind of national security interest.
SpaceX operates a fleet of privately owned ICBMs under license from the US government. Without the license and authority of the US government, SpaceX’s fundamental operations would be criminal: You and I would be arrested if we tried to build an ICBM without government permission.
The intellectual property they are using is subject to ITAR regulation. Any American trying to transfer that IP outside of the US would be quickly indicted. Any foreign government using or authorizing the use of that IP would be heavily sanctioned.
That’s not true. All nuclear weapons in the US’s arsenal are under the control of the US military. You are correct to say that it would be illegal for any private contractor to operate its own fleet of ICBMs…and that includes SpeceX.
ITAR doesn’t prevent SpaceX from moving its base of operations to another country. As I said, they are a privately owned company. Moving their operations to another country is not the same thing as “giving” that technology to that country.
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. ICBM. You’ll note that there is no “N” in that initialism. The presence or absence of a nuclear weapon is irrelevant. The missile itself is what I am talking about.
The missile, and all of the essential technology for building and operating it, are subject to export controls. ITAR and EAR, which apply not only to the physical items, but to the IP associated with those items as well.
ITAR allows SpaceX to take the name of the company to another country, and that’s about it.
Not the hardware, software, IP, or anything they would need to actually conduct their operations from that country.
StarLink could (probably) be moved out of the US, and rely on foreign launchers to maintain their satellite constellations. But not SpaceX, unless the US government specifically permits them to do so. Which they won’t.
Nah man space rockets are just ICBMs with a human payload instead of an explosive one.