NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told Semafor’s Burgess Everett Friday that a Wall Street Journal report about calls between SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Russian President Vladimir Putin  “should be investigated.”

“I don’t know if that story is true,” Nelson said. “If it’s true there have been multiple conversations with Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then that would be concerning, particularly for NASA and the Department of Defense,” he added.

SpaceX is a key commercial partner for NASA: On Friday, NASA’s Crew-8 mission members returned to Earth on a SpaceX capsule. Speaking at Semafor’s World Economy Summit in Washington, DC, Nelson stressed that the agency was nonpartisan and praised his dealings with SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell. The NASA head said that Musk largely leaves her to run the company, which he added has “been phenomenally successful.”

    • anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      17 hours ago

      Idk why but I assumed getting investigated was a large part of getting government aerospace contracts but I guess that’s just the movies

      • TheGoldenGod@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        You would certainly hope so, but the government really likes the lowest bidders. So they likely don’t look to carefully into contractors.

    • dellish@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I get so tired of these headlines that are basically “Authority figure says obvious thing”. Like, yeah, and so do most other people, thanks for the update.

    • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      Not so huge, he’s a billionaire.

      In theory he’s allowed to:

      • mistreat his workers
      • not pay his bills
      • pump and dump stocks
      • undermine the worlds help to Ukraine by messing with their internet for Russia
      • Steal subsidies for EVs and lying about the capabilities
      • Bribing officials to get public transport contracts and never fulfill them
      • bribe voters / election interference
      • defame everyone on his platform with misinformation and supports domestic terrorism

      There’s plenty more, he’s probably heavily cooking the books at Tesla too.

  • mkwt@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Musk has a security clearance for the SpaceX contracts, right? Did he file the proper forms reporting the foreign contacts?

  • LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Stop giving any money to that dipshit. He is literally the biggest welfare queen in the history of mankind

    • mipadaitu@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      No, force him to divest from spacex. It’s too valuable for our space industry to just stop using it.

      Fuck, just make him give it to Gwynne Shotwell.

      • MCasq_qsaCJ_234
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        7 hours ago

        It would be strange for SpaceX to become a state-owned company like Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, TVA or USPS.

      • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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        11 hours ago

        The faith people have that shotwell is insulating SpaceX from Musk’s incompetency feels more hopeful than factual.

    • MCasq_qsaCJ_234
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      7 hours ago

      Once the election is over, the DOJ may or may not investigate depending on who wins the election.