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.
That’s because…technically…the government mostly provides contracts to SpaceX to take their stuff to and from orbit. They’re basically paying for a service…not investing in SpaceX’s product development. Even though that is an indirect result of giving them those contracts.
It’s like hiring a landscaper to do your lawn. They come with their own equipment, so even though they bought it using the money you pay them…you don’t own any of it. They do.
Sure, except they’re also helping them develop their technology and paying them for it.
It’s like hiring a landscaper, but they don’t have their own equipment to start with, so you have to provide your technology and knowledge, as well as employees sometimes, to help them build their equipment, and then you pay them a premium to do the work instead of doing it all yourself.
Sounds like corruption 101