"After spending months and more than $250 million campaigning to elect President Trump, Elon Musk made a call late last year to help roll out his plan for humanity's path beyond Earth.
He reached his friend Jared Isaacman with a request: Would Isaacman become the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration? He told Isaacman, the payments entrepreneur who has flown to orbit with SpaceX and invested in the company, that they could make NASA great again and work toward their shared ambition of getting humans to Mars, according to people briefed on the conversation.
Soon after the call, Trump announced Isaacman's appointment.
Musk, the world's richest man and now a top adviser to the president, has extraordinary influence on budgets, personnel and technology systems across federal agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates commercial spaceflights at SpaceX, Musk's rocket and satellite-internet company.
Through the new Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has cut budgets, laid off staff and ditched programs. He also has DOGE reviewing the operations and personnel of agencies that have investigated Musk's companies, including the Federal Trade Commission and Environmental Protection Agency.
It is at NASA, though, where Musk is making the biggest shift in an agency's priorities to align them with his own -- both financially and personally. He is working to recast its programs, reallocate federal spending and install loyalists to aid his decadeslong goal of sending people to Mars.
He has also worked to win backing from Trump by telling the president that getting people to Mars would shine his legacy as a "president of firsts," according to people briefed on the conversations.
The ambition could have a potentially huge impact on SpaceX, which has emerged as the dominant space technology and operations company globally and is already one of NASA's biggest contractors.
The White House plans to propose killing a powerful Boeing-built rocket designed for NASA to launch astronauts to the moon and beyond in a coming budget plan, according to people briefed on the plans. Canceling the vehicle, called the Space Launch System or SLS, would potentially free up billions for Mars efforts and set up a clash with members of Congress who support it.
SpaceX officials have told people outside the company in recent weeks that NASA's resources will be reallocated toward Mars efforts.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has told industry and government peers that her work is increasingly focused on getting to Mars. Inside SpaceX, employees have been told to prioritize Mars-related work on its deep-space rocket over NASA's moon program when those efforts conflict.
A longtime SpaceX executive moved to NASA to shadow the agency's acting administrator ahead of Isaacman's confirmation. He's in position to monitor the highest levels of decision-making, and is known to some as "Elon's conduit," people familiar with the arrangement said.
And NASA's program known as Artemis, its long-range plan to explore the moon and eventually Mars, is being rethought to make Mars a priority. One idea: Musk and government officials have discussed a scenario in which SpaceX would give up its moon-focused Artemis contracts worth more than $4 billion to free up funds for Mars-related projects, a person briefed on the discussions said.
"We are going to be able to take astronauts to Mars," Musk said in a Fox News interview in mid-March. "And ultimately build a self-sustaining civilization on Mars. That is the long-term goal of the company: make life multi-planetary."
Trump in an interview in October called on Musk to launch a Mars mission during his next term. And in his inauguration speech -- in a line the president himself added -- Trump said he would launch Americans to "plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars."
The White House said the president advanced American leadership in space in his first term and will do so in his second term. "As for concerns regarding conflicts of interest between Elon Musk and DOGE, President Trump has stated he will not allow conflicts, and Elon himself has committed to recusing himself from potential conflicts," White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.
Musk and his representatives didn't respond to requests for comment.
A NASA spokeswoman said it looks forward to its incoming administrator "setting an agenda that aligns with the bold vision President Trump outlined in his inaugural address." She added: "In that spirit, we remain committed to advancing an ambitious strategy to return Americans to the lunar surface, reach Mars, and push the boundaries of exploration even further."
This article is based on interviews with nearly three dozen people close to Musk and the Trump administration, NASA, lawmakers and SpaceX.
For decades, colonizing Mars has been the stuff of science fiction, and the obsession of a band of devotees scattered across the country. Musk has emerged as a leader in the movement. At his companies, employees have spent years conducting research and working on Mars-related initiatives.
Past U.S. presidents have called for human exploration of Mars, but launching crewed missions has been more of a stretch goal, given the immense technical hurdles and risks to astronauts.
It can take roughly a week to get to the moon and back, versus an estimated two to three years for a round trip between Earth and Mars.
NASA currently first wants to carry out a return to the moon's surface. It wants to establish a sustained human presence on the moon, with habitats and rovers. It plans to use that experience to inform a crewed mission to Mars, but when such a flight might occur isn't spelled out in recent agency documents.
Musk wants to move up plans to go to Mars. SpaceX wants to use Starship -- still in the testing phase -- to launch an uncrewed mission to the red planet next year, with crewed missions as early as 2029.
To accomplish a plan to move up a Mars mission would likely mean a massive reordering of NASA's programs -- many of which take place over years -- and staff. The nearly 70-year-old agency has about 18,000 employees and an annual budget of around $25 billion. Along with space exploration, staffers study climate change, research pilotless aircraft, carry out scientific experiments and help operate the International Space Station, among other activities.
NASA staff on Jan. 31 received an email, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, from the agency's acting administrator to welcome a new senior adviser: longtime SpaceX executive Michael Altenhofen. In his role at SpaceX, he became close to Isaacman and talks to him frequently. He took up his position right away, ahead of the confirmation hearing for Isaacman.
Days later, NASA's top brass gathered on the ninth floor of the agency's Washington headquarters. Present were DOGE staffers, there to analyze the agency's work. It started off on an awkward note: As people around the conference room shared their names and titles, one person whom others knew to be a DOGE staffer described themselves as a staffer at the Treasury Department -- instead of as part of DOGE.
Even before the meeting, some NASA officials had been concerned about how transparent DOGE staffers would be about what they were doing.
Many NASA employees are rattled by changes leaders have made since the inauguration and are worried that a potentially large number of layoffs will upend the agency's work.
NASA is committed to optimizing its workforce and resources in alignment with DOGE initiatives, the NASA spokeswoman said, adding that it ensures taxpayer dollars are directed toward the highest-impact projects while maintaining NASA's essential functions.
NASA's long-range plan to explore the moon and eventually Mars is under the microscope. NASA has been working on the Artemis program and its predecessors for years. The cost from the government's fiscal years 2012 through 2025 is estimated at $93 billion, according to the agency's inspector general.
In January, Musk called the moon program a distraction. Days earlier he had criticized Artemis, saying "Something entirely new is needed."
SpaceX, Boeing and others have billions in contracts to build rockets, ships and lunar landing vehicles, among other technologies, for the program.
Musk has discussed with officials the idea that SpaceX's moon-focused contracts, valued at more than $4 billion, could be dropped in favor of Mars plans.
SpaceX's current Artemis contracts call for it to conduct an uncrewed test landing on the moon ahead of two missions where the spacecraft would transfer astronauts from an orbit to the lunar surface.
Current and former NASA officials have said they are worried that a major overhaul of Artemis would end up stalling U.S. progress after years of effort on hardware and infrastructure for the program. Getting rid of the SLS rocket carries its own risks, those officials say, because new private-sector vehicles, including SpaceX's Starship, aren't operational or are still ramping up.
Starship needs to reach important milestones -- including work related to fuel transfers and operations with Orion, a Lockheed Martin-built craft that would ferry astronauts to the moon -- before it could transport crew. SpaceX has conducted eight test launches, but the last two ended in explosions.
NASA has flown one mission with SLS, an uncrewed test flight in 2022 that launched an Orion spacecraft around the moon and returned it to Earth. It has additional flights scheduled in the years ahead.
Officials from Trump's Office of Management and Budget have told people about discussions under way to move U.S. government dollars toward Mars initiatives and away from programs focused on the moon and science missions.
Killing or dramatically remaking the program would unravel years of development work, but some proponents say much of the hardware for Artemis, from the SLS rocket to ground infrastructure, is too expensive, slow to produce and behind schedule.
Any changes to the Artemis program could also affect Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's space company, which has a contract to develop a lander for a future moon mission.
Artemis has powerful supporters in Congress. Other lawmakers hold views that clash with Musk on NASA priorities outside of Artemis. The International Space Station, the orbiting research lab that NASA helps operate, generates work at NASA's facility in Houston and is important to Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas). NASA plans to decommission the station around 2030, although it could be extended, and wants private companies to develop new stations. But Musk in February said the ISS had served its purpose and should be brought down sooner to better focus on Mars.
SpaceX aims to test Starship aggressively with multiple test flights. Those must be approved by the FAA, the federal air-safety regulator.
Following a test flight of Starship earlier this year, Musk suggested to a group of people gathered at the company's Starbase complex in Texas that he saw space-related regulation as antithetical to achieving what SpaceX wants.
SpaceX said the FAA has at times slowed progress on its Starship rocket, and Musk last year accused the agency of overreach after it said SpaceX violated rocket-launch regulations.
Staffers from Musk's DOGE group have been active at the FAA, focusing in part on air-traffic-control technology.
Isaacman, Trump's nominee for NASA chief, has told people that he and Musk share a vision for making it possible for humans to live on other planets. When asked by an X user if he thought humans could fly to Mars as soon as 2028, Isaacman said it is worth investing in big-picture goals. The billionaire founded payments-technology firm Shift4 Payments and has been interested in space since childhood. A spokeswoman for Isaacman didn't respond to requests for comment.
Musk and his associates have discussed other potential NASA administrator candidates in case Isaacman isn't confirmed, according to a person briefed on the deliberations.
Part of Isaacman's preparation ahead of the hearing, which hasn't been scheduled yet, includes questions about Musk's role in setting government policy and Isaacman's ties to Musk and SpaceX.
In a recent filing, Isaacman reported more than $5 million in capital gains related to SpaceX shares, indicating he sold company stock. He valued agreements with Musk's company, including a space flight deal, at more than $50 million, and said one of his business ventures would terminate them if he is confirmed to run NASA, filings show. His payments company also does business with SpaceX's Starlink division.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the mission of taking humanity to other planets. Engineers at SpaceX have, at times, worked on how humans might live off the land on Mars, such as by turning materials on the planet into usable resources. And senior technical leaders include an employee whose job it is to focus on landing a future Starship spacecraft on the Martian surface.” [1]
Lithuania also needs people like Musk's team. Instead of dreaming of flying to the Moon, we need Mars, instead of dreaming of producing obsolete explosives in Lithuania, we need biotechnological innovations. Bureaucratic badgers in Lithuania also need to be chased away.
1. Elon Musk's Mission to Take Over NASA -- and Mars --- The billionaire is in position to speed up plans for a voyage to the planet, with a potentially huge impact on SpaceX. Glazer, Emily; Maidenberg, Micah. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 31 Mar 2025: A1.
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