“I’ve no issues.”
Get Owned
NASA has hedged many of its bets on SpaceX regardless of its controversial and majorly overworked proprietor — and because the company’s director now suggests, that is primarily as a result of Elon Musk is not operating it.
In an interview with NPR, NASA director Invoice Nelson gave a captivating and telling reply when requested about Musk’s possession of the spaceflight agency that enjoys tens of billions of dollars in authorities contracts.
“Elon Musk’s decision-making has come underneath quite a lot of scrutiny lately in terms of a few of his different firms, Twitter and Tesla,” interviewer Scott Detrow requested. “Are you involved that a lot of this plan is within the fingers of Elon Musk at this cut-off date?”
“Elon Musk… some of the necessary selections he made, as a matter of reality, is he picked a president named Gwynne Shotwell,” Nelson demurred. “She runs SpaceX. She is great. And so I’ve no issues.”
Trigger For Concern
This is not the primary time the NASA director and former Florida senator has expressed similar sentiments.
A couple of months after Musk bought Twitter — although earlier than he disastrously renamed it “X” — in late 2022, Nelson recounted to NBC News his aid when discussing the acquisition with the SpaceX president.
“Inform me that the distraction that Elon may need on Twitter isn’t going to have an effect on SpaceX,” Nelson recalled querying Shotwell.
In response, she apparently advised him that it hadn’t harmed the spaceflight firm and that he had “nothing to fret about.”
“I hugged her with a smile on my face, as a result of I do know she is operating that factor,” the NASA director continued. “She’s operating SpaceX.”
Industrial P-U
All the identical, the previous deputy director of NASA remarked in a tell-all memoir launched in 2022 that previous to taking up as head of the company, Nelson was much more anti-Musk than he’s now.
In her e book “Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age,” former deputy director Lori Garver mentioned that when he was nonetheless a senator, Nelson “led the opposition” to SpaceX, which she championed whereas spearheading what turned the Industrial Crew Program. In a single non-public assembly, as Garver recounted, Nelson even shouted at her to “‘get your boy Elon in line.'”
Whereas he is publicly softened on Musk, Nelson can not seem to assist however let his animosity in the direction of the bombastic multi-hyphenate present every now and then — and because the particular person answerable for NASA, which has invested so closely in SpaceX, it isn’t arduous to see why.
Extra on SpaceX: SpaceX Employees Getting Wounded at Incredible Rates
