Could Donald Trump's quarrel with Elon Musk have cosmic consequences?

• Elon Musk officially ended his term in President Donald Trump's administration at the end of May, reaching the 130-day mark, the maximum time allowed for a "special government employee."
• As he departed, Elon Musk issued sharp criticism of Trump’s signature spending bill, which is being debated in Congress because of its expected impact on the national debt.
• The dispute quickly escalated into an “internet brawl” with Elon Musk and President Donald Trump hurling insults at each other on their social media platforms.

After Musk called the bill an abomination, Trump said Musk was “crazy” and threatened to end government contracts and subsidies to Musk’s companies. Musk responded, “Go ahead, make my day.”

Musk later escalated the situation with further posts in which he supported Donald Trump’s impeachment bid, and also stated — in a since-deleted post — that because of the president’s threat, SpaceX “will immediately begin retiring its Dragon spacecraft.” Musk later backtracked, writing on X, “Ok, we will not be retiring Dragon.”

Dragon is a key entity for American manned space flights. It is thanks to it that NASA astronauts reach and return to the International Space Station. Analysts also point out that NASA uses SpaceX rockets to launch many of its scientific missions.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s mutual grievances are therefore worrisome in terms of the potential for disruption to other parts of America’s space plans, centered on SpaceX. Many of them are seen as critical to national security.

For example, SpaceX's constellation of more than 7,000 Starlink communications satellites has become critical to troops in the ongoing conflict between Russia and U.S.-allied Ukraine.