Author: Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s new administration is likely to abolish the White House National Space Council, a policy council that lobbyists at Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been pushing to abolish, according to three people familiar with the plans.
Trump aides and SpaceX chief lobbyist Mat Dunn have told aides in recent months that they see the space council as a “waste of time,” according to sources, raising doubts about its fate and whether Vice President JD Vance would be interested in chairing it as required by law.
After Trump’s election victory, his team did not contact the Space Council, which is chaired by Kamala Harris, as it did with NASA and other agencies about transition plans, one of the sources said. Council staff offices near the White House are mostly empty, the source said.
Dunn, SpaceX and former President Joe Biden’s space council leaders did not respond to requests for comment.
The collapse of the Space Council would be an early indication of SpaceX’s influence on space policy under Trump.
Musk, the SpaceX CEO who spent a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump return to the White House, has maintained a close relationship with the president and aligned with him on plans to send missions to Mars during his second term.
In December, Trump nominated Jared Isaacman, a Musk associate and longtime SpaceX client, to lead NASA. In November, Trump joined Musk at SpaceX’s Mission Control in Texas for the company’s sixth test launch of Starship, powered by a Mars-tailored rocket that could play a role in potential missions to Mars.
The Biden administration kept the council, which hosted one public council meeting a year as needed, to focus mostly on building international alliances and rules in space.
In 2023, the council released a proposal that frustrated the private space industry for trying to implement a “mission authorization,” which would have resulted in greater U.S. government oversight of corporate activities in space.
Trump’s first administration in 2017 revived the Space Council, after it was disbanded in 1993, as a spearhead for the creation of a US space force and a platform for launching policies such as returning men to the moon and reforming commercial space launch regulations.
If the council is disbanded, two of the sources said, Trump’s team would seek to build on some of those space policy efforts from his first term while fulfilling a campaign promise to shrink the federal bureaucracy, a key task entrusted to Musk’s government efficiency team.
Views on the value of the space council vary between presidential administrations, with some seeing it as a duplicate of the White House’s smaller space-focused offices, while others believe it allows for faster action on space priorities.
Audrey Schaffer, former head of space policy in Biden’s National Security Council, defended the space council’s role in an op-ed on Monday.
“Without a space policy team,” Schaffer said, “the sheer volume of issues that the White House staff has to deal with on a daily basis is quickly crowding out any space program.”
