Musk backs down on threat to retire SpaceX Dragon spacecraft amid Trump dispute
www.theguardian.com
World’s richest person says craft, which Nasa relies on to take astronauts to ISS, won’t be decommissioned after pleas from X users

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.

  • DeceptichumEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    I think you mean for America. Europe has its own programs and they’re only ramping them up.

    • jacksilver@lemmy.world
      1·
      21 hours ago

      Most of Europe is at war with the only European country who’s gotten people into space. Russia certainly doesn’t have the money or capacity to work on manned space operations right now and while the rest of Europe may be working on it, they might get there.

      • DeceptichumEnglish
        2·
        21 hours ago

        I was talking about ESA. They have the capability with the Arianne 6 to get people into space.

        • jacksilver@lemmy.world
          1·
          20 hours ago

          I can’t find anything about crewed flights. The best I found was this article.

          This Wiki mentions planned manned flights for Ariane, but maybe they’ve done something recently?

      • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
        1·
        20 hours ago

        Most of Europe is at war with the only European country who’s gotten people into space

        Sure, but they’re on the same side.

        (Unless you mean the USSR, but that hasn’t existed for more than 30 years, and it was mostly Ukrainian scientists and engineers doing the job during the space race anyway.)

        • jacksilver@lemmy.world
          1·
          19 hours ago

          I think you’re joking a out how Ukrainians are the real people who got the USSR into space?

          I was more calling out Russia is the only country with rockets that have gotten people into space. I think Europe has the means to do it, but whether that’ll be a priority over defense or other issues is the question. If SpaceX really pulls out of manned space flights, then it’s really just China at that point.

          • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
            2·
            19 hours ago

            I think you’re joking a out how Ukrainians are the real people who got the USSR into space?

            I’m not. It was mostly paperclipped Nazis on one side, mostly Ukrainians on the other. 🤷‍♂️

            Russia might have ended up with the USSR’s rockets, but they certainly didn’t make and much less design them. The only thing Russia has ever produced is a worse future for Russia. They’re extremely efficient at that. It’s their whole history: “… and then it got worse.”