Is Trump Laundering Spaceflight Money Through the Air Force?

Last Friday, the U.S. Air Force announced it was tacking a whopping $40.77 million onto an existing contract with SpaceX. The money is going toward the development and testing of the Raptor engine—the ones the company plans to use to send people to Mars one day. The new round of investment is a glimpse into one way the White House might bolster the commercial spaceflight industry without having to directly spend money on science. Doing it this way might also exacerbate the regulatory pitfalls often associated with military investments.

A quick summary for the unfamiliar: SpaceX’s long-term goal is to create sustainable, affordable interplanetary transportation that could help establish a human colony on Mars. The company’s Raptor engine design is a cornerstone of that plan because it is supposed to run on methane and liquid oxygen instead of kerosene. CEO Elon Musk believes that methane fuel can be generated on Mars itself, eliminating the need to expend power and space in dragging and storing fuel on Mars or other interstitial outposts between Earth and Mars.

What does any of this have to do with Donald Trump? Since the election, one of the few specific space policy visions Trump and his allies (including current NASA administrator nominee Jim Bridenstine) have espoused is to significantly boost the presence and activity of American spaceflight companies, and get the private sector to take over many of NASA’s current low Earth orbit operations.

The problem is that the private spaceflight industry is still in its infancy, and it relies heavily on NASA for investment in the form of contracts (like launches and spacecraft-part development) in order to help it grow. The problem for Trump is that even while he wants to go to Mars (or at least to the moon), his administration has also been extremely clear about its desire to gut federal spending in every avenue of the executive branch.

Except defense.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/10/how_trump_is_using_the_air_force_to_fund_spaceflight.html