Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, has made two trips to Trump Tower and met with President Trump in the White House yesterday on his first full day in office. It appears they discussed a possible manned mission to Mars and public-private space partnerships, signaling a possible shifting of NASA's away from a focus on climate change. Musk and his team at SpaceX have the bold dream of colonizing Mars, and think they can launch the first human mission to the surface of the Red Planet as soon as 2024.
Under President Obama NASA strategy did for space what the shift from a DARPA-funded government-centric computer industry of the 70s and early 80's to an entrepreneurial private sector strategy did for the computer industry, spawning the Internet, Apple, Intel, Google, and Microsoft. The shift from government-funded to private launched the US as the world's innovation leader.
Trump also talked with historian Douglas Brinkley about the Apollo program and how it brought the country together in the 1960s under JFK, according to the Washington Post.
“He reflected on how the Apollo program brought the country together,” Brinkley told The Washington Post this week in a phone interview. “It captures the spirit of the American people. That’s the word he used – ‘spirit’.”
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