Summary
Vivek Ramaswamy, recently appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has proposed defunding federal programs that lack current congressional authorization.
This could affect programs like veterans’ healthcare, NASA, and early education initiatives, which still receive funding despite expired authorizations.
Ramaswamy argues that cutting these programs could save billions, and he’s committed to targeting expenditures that “don’t advance the interests of American citizens.”
DOGE, co-led by Elon Musk, aims to curb government spending, with Musk estimating potential cuts of up to $2 trillion.
I expected NASA to get screwed by DOGE. What I didn’t expect was that it’s at the behest of Ramaswamy instead of Elmo. 2024 is defying expectations yet again.
NASA gives SpaceX fat government paychecks. He doesn’t want anything to happen to them.
Not necessarily. He wouldn’t want anything to happen to the funding that ends up going to himself. He would likely be thrilled if their funding for designing and building their own rockets dried up, though.
It’s right in line with the purpose of DOGE and an easy sell to anybody that doesn’t immediately see the conflict of interest: “Why are we spending $100 million annually to play catch-up with the private sector? Reallocate $80 million to get rockets that work today and save the taxpayers $20 million while doing it.”
I dunno I disagree. I think he’d like nothing more than if NASA just completely disappeared. I’ve thought that since the second they started talking about him guiding fiduciary spending. Once NASA is out of the picture, it’s all SpaceX all the time. Trump is already most of the way there anyway. “His rocket company is the only reason we can now send American astronauts into space.”
This is part of the plan I suspect.
Yep he doesn’t want NASA to steal his thunder with the first manned moon landing since the Apollo program. NASA’s Orion is competing directly with SpaceX
I don’t think he actually cares much about achieving anything spaceflight related. The guy has been hyping up his companies by holding big events for technologies ready in “X years” and consistently failing to deliver on either deadlines, tangible progress, quality, or sometimes all three of those.
I’m under the impression that E-con Musk sees a golden opportunity to use his undeserved status as a competent inventor and businessman as an opportunity to redirect government funds into his own pocket.