Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, on Thursday said his company SpaceX would begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft after he engaged in an extraordinary public fallout with Donald Trump who had threatened to cancel government contracts with Musk’s businesses.
“In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,” Musk posted on the social media platform X, which he owns.
A few minutes earlier Trump had posted on Truth Social – the media platform that he owns – that he might cancel huge lucrative contracts with Musk’s businesses, which include the SpaceX company that is building a fleet of rockets.
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. ICBM. You’ll note that there is no “N” in that initialism. The presence or absence of a nuclear weapon is irrelevant. The missile itself is what I am talking about.
The missile, and all of the essential technology for building and operating it, are subject to export controls. ITAR and EAR, which apply not only to the physical items, but to the IP associated with those items as well.
ITAR allows SpaceX to take the name of the company to another country, and that’s about it.
Not the hardware, software, IP, or anything they would need to actually conduct their operations from that country.
StarLink could (probably) be moved out of the US, and rely on foreign launchers to maintain their satellite constellations. But not SpaceX, unless the US government specifically permits them to do so. Which they won’t.