And what of international partners and the geopolitical implications of this? During a confirmation
hearing this week before the US Senate Commerce committee, incoming NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said expanding the coalition of nations participating in the Artemis Program was one of his big goals. Increasing the space agency's reliance on SpaceX likely would work against this.
With the low-cost, reusable Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has already badly damaged the commercial launch industries in Europe, Russia, and Japan. For the Artemis Program, Europe is contributing the Service Module for the Orion spacecraft. How would these officials react if NASA now says, "non merci" to that contribution because of SpaceX?
"The nation's activities in deep space remain very tied up in international policy, alliances, adversaries, and security, as well as space exploration and science," an industry source told Ars. "There are a number of foreign policy interdependencies and offsets that are managed through or impact space, generally below the surface. What does this choice signal to all of those players?"