Elon Musk Is Remaking the US Space Program
On this episode of Tech Won’t Save Us, Tim Fernholz on Elon Musk’s influence in the White House and, consequently, the US space program.

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On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us,Paris Marx is joined by Tim Fernholz to discuss how Elon Musk’s influence in the White House is shaping the US Space Program, why he’s pushing NASA toward Mars instead of the Moon, and whether the Starship rocket is in trouble.
Tim Fernholz is a senior reporter at Payload Space and the author of Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race.
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White House senior adviser and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attends a cabinet meeting at the White House on April 30, 2025, in Washington, DC.
(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)On this episode of Tech Won’t Save Us, I am joined by Tim Fernholz to discuss how Elon Musk’s influence in the White House is shaping the US Space Program, why he’s pushing NASA toward Mars instead of the moon, and whether the Starship rocket is in trouble.
Tim Fernholz is a senior reporter at Payload Space and the author of Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race.
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Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Paris Marx is joined by Karen Hao to discuss how Sam Altman’s goal of scale at all costs has spawned a new empire founded on exploitation of people and the environment, resulting in not only the loss of valuable research into more inventive AI systems, but also exacerbated data privacy issues, intellectual property erosion, and the perpetuation of surveillance capitalism.
Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist and the author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.
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