Elon Musk is the founder and driving force behind the tech companies Tesla, SpaceX, and Solar City. He has a net worth of $15.2 billion and is considered by many to be this century’s Thomas Edison.
He has endured some criticism for being on President Trump's economic advisory council. On February 4th, he defended his participation by saying “In addition, I again raised climate. I believe this is doing good, so will remain on council & keep at it. Doing otherwise would be wrong.”
There is another good reason for being on Trump’s good side, SpaceX has significant contracts with NASA for commercial resupply flights to the International Space Station and several upcoming military launches. Knowing Trump’s penchant for revenge on anybody who crosses him, it makes good business sense for Musk to play nice even though he has well-known progressive leanings.
This may all change this week as Trump continues his campaign to literally wreck everything. The target this week is the Paris Climate Change Accord. Most news outlets are reporting that Trump has decided to exit the agreement in the next couple of days. Musk, being the founder and part owner of Solar City (a solar products firm), is an advocate of drastic action to prevent destructive climate change by switching power generation to solar and transportation to electric vehicles (such as his Tesla cars).
Musk now indicates that he may change his mind about staying on Trump’s economic advisory council, as this Twitter conversation three hours ago indicates.
What will you do if he makes the decision to leave?
How much might this cost Musk? As of this year, NASA has paid Boeing $4.8 billion to develop a spaceship to carry astronauts to the ISS. SpaceX has been paid $3.1 billion to do the same thing. NASA may decide to retain only one company to provide space station transportation services, leaving the other one in the lurch. Trump could easily steer the contract to Boeing even though the SpaceX vehicle will be nearly one-half the cost. That would be a significant blow to SpaceX.
Will SpaceX go bust if Trump turns on Musk? Probably not, as SpaceX has a huge backlog of commercial spacecraft customers and for the foreseeable future will be the lowest-cost launch supplier.
In any case, Musk’s decision to stop advising the White House is a “profile in courage”, in my view.