Elon Musk on Track for Massive Government payday Again

The Trump administration did not rule out that its pitch to replace the nation’s space launch system could massively benefit Elon Musk.

In an interview with Fox Business Friday, Office of Management and Budget Director Russel Vought refused to clarify if the “Dark MAGA” tech billionaire would be pocketing off of the budget increase.

“The budget phases out the grossly expensive and delayed space launch system,” Fox Business’s Charles Payne said . “Is there a chance that Elon Musk could benefit from that?”

“Look, this is a billion dollar investment into Mars,” said Vought, a former Project 2025 architect. “We’re doing both, we’re going back to the moon as part of the Artemis. We’ve protected exploration funding that’s open to all companies. Elon Musk hasn’t been a part of the NASA budget conversations at all. And we also provide resources for what we’re doing on Mars.”

As part of its budget proposal Friday, the Trump administration is reportedly looking to slash NASA’s budget by 24 percent year over year, amounting to the largest single-year slice to the agency in its history, with $6 billion in cuts.

The proposal spells the end of the Space Launch System rocket and NASA’s brand new Orion spacecraft. It also envisions killing the Gateway space station that is crucial to one of the space agency’s biggest missions: a full-fledged, multi-step exploration of the moon dubbed the Artemis campaign . (As soon as the U.S. beats China in its space race.)

“We do believe that, after Artemis, it’s time to look for lower cost, commercial, cheaper vehicles that allow us to not have the cost overruns and the delays and the expense that we’ve seen in the SLS and the Orion program,” Vought told Fox. “We’re not doing anything that would in any way delay what’s necessary to get to the moon.”

Rather, the White House foresees that the nation’s future space funding ought to focus on Mars—a concept easily linked back to the CEO of SpaceX.

Musk has been a vocal opponent of NASA’s Artemis campaign. In January, Musk posted On point X, he stated that the Moon serves merely as a "distraction" and that his company aims to head directly for Mars.