Elon Musk and SpaceX are big winners in Donald J. Trump’s 2026 spending plan.
President Trump has provided Musk’s wish lists on both NASA and the Pentagon in a way that could drive billions of dollars in new business to Musk’s space technology company if Congress signs the budget plan.
At the Pentagon, Trump is calling for a significant increase of nearly entirely 13%, thanks to the allocation of a Congressional Budget Settlement Plan, which is under consideration.
The jump occurs, but many other federal agencies will be cut, some of which are vast missile defense systems and space missions to Mars and the Moon, in order to overpay federal spending in two regions where SpaceX is profiting.
Trump proposed a Golden Dome defense system to track and kill missiles heading towards US targets that could have been sent by the US, Russia, North Korea or other rivals.
Pentagon officials say SpaceX is considered to be the top recipient of this new spending burst.
That’s because SpaceX is building rockets that can fire military payloads into orbit and satellite systems that can provide the monitoring and targeting tools needed for projects.
Trump’s budget plan calls for a massive amount of new money, private but not exclusive, for “US space control to strengthen US national security.”
SpaceX is already the largest recipient of pentagonal spending on existing military low-earth orbit communications systems, earning the biggest cuts in Pentagon Rocket launch contracts. Congress’ approval of this plan to significantly increase spending is a big win for Musk and SpaceX.
The budget proposed by Trump calls for the 2026 Pentagon spending demand to be $113 billion more than this year. But that increase will increase entirely as Congress is considering through the 2025 settlement plan, according to Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former space industry executive. Footnotes on Trump’s plan.
NASA’s budget faces an overall cut in Trump’s plans, but there is an increase that aligns heavily with SpaceX’s own company priorities.
The spending plan was followed by Musk’s commercial rivals, asking NASA to phase out funding for the space launch system, and the Boeing-led rocket program, and Orion Astronaut Capsule, were built by Lockheed Martin, part of three planned flights to bring humans back to the moon.
Instead, Trump’s budget calls for a “more cost-effective commercial system that supports the more ambitious subsequent moon missions,” an industry currently dominated by SpaceX. Industry executives said Friday that Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, who developed his own new rocket, could also be a major beneficiary of the shift.
NASA’s budget calls for $1 billion in new spending to focus on its mission to MARS. He is already building a new rocket called Starship to try to implement this plan.
“We’ve had SpaceX handprints so far.” payloadcommercial space news site. “There’s no other way to see it. SpaceX is positioned as the main beneficiary of most of these budgetary movements.”
The NASA budget has several items that could reduce spending on SpaceX, such as a decrease in spending on the International Space Station, where SpaceX delivers both cargo and astronauts.
However, SpaceX still could have a winner. Recently won a $843 million contract “Open the Space Station” When I retired in 2030. And Musk urged Trump to speed up his retirement date.
“The decision is up to the president, but my recommendation is as soon as possible,” Musk said, I wrote it On his social media platform XX in February.
In 2024, SpaceX secured $3.8 billion in federal contracts. Most of them come from NASA and the Pentagon. The company has won a total of $18 billion in federal contracts over the past decade, according to a New York Times analysis of federal contract data.
The size of SpaceX’s expected new government ventures has begun to become clear based on the policy changes Trump has made since January, but has raised questions from Washington Democrats. They question whether Musk, who spent more than $4.5 billion to support Trump’s final presidential election, has cashed in his political contributions and position as a top White House advisor.
Experts have long argued that NASA is too focused on a budgetary and rearward moon program called Artemis, particularly in part of the efforts that rely on Boeing and Lockheed.
“This is now contaminating all of this with suspicion of inappropriate impact,” Harrison said. “Even if these are legitimate questions.”
