Exclusive: NASA head says report of Elon Musk talking to Putin should be investigated | Semafor
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NASA head Bill Nelson told Semafor that alleged calls between Russian President Vladimir Putin and billionaire Elon Musk are “concerning” if true.

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
      56·
      21 days 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
        241·
        21 days ago

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

    • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
      22·
      21 days 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.

    • dellish@lemmy.world
      10·
      21 days 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.