Congress, Lobbying

Mr. Musk goes to Washington

The Washington Post examines the lobbying efforts of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who has become something of a lightning rod in the ongoing debate about the administration’s NASA proposals, specifically development of commercial crew capabilities. The articles does note one area of debate: whether he has become a Democratic partisan in the process:

Since 2003, Musk has given about $300,000 to federal candidates, divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans, according to records compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. In the first six months of 2010, however, Musk donated nearly $71,000 to Democrats, compared with less than $7,000 to Republicans from him or his company’s PAC, the data show.

During a recent interview, Musk bristled at the notion – increasingly asserted by Republican detractors – that he has become a Democratic partisan. After all, he’s an avid supporter of Republican Meg Whitman, the California gubernatorial candidate who oversaw the acquisition of PayPal when she headed eBay.

But Musk also acknowledged that he is “a fan of Obama,” calling him “a good president” and “a big proponent of competition.” He said he has been disappointed in GOP opposition to the administration’s NASA plans.

Specifically, the SpaceX PAC has contributed $40,900 to congressional candidates in the current election cycle, with $6,000 of which going to Republican candidates. Since the beginning of the year Musk has donated only $1,000 to Republicans, namely the Future Leaders PAC, while donating over $70,000 to Democratic candidates and organizations. Still, he notes, “Our influence is a tiny fraction of any one of the giant contractors,” such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who spend far more on lobbying than SpaceX.

The whole lobbying process, he suggested, has left him a little disillusioned. “For a while I was thinking government doesn’t deserve the negative reputation the public has,” he said. “But now I think maybe it does.”

38 comments to Mr. Musk goes to Washington

  • DCSCA

    Lobby politicians then asks for government subsidies. If Musk was truly a missile man he’s have taken all that cash and invested it into his own company and pressed on with getting a crewed vehicle flying. He’d have gotten more bang for his bucks from a rocket than greasing the palms of politicians. “After all, he’s an avid supporter of Republican Meg Whitman, the California gubernatorial candidate who oversaw the acquisition of PayPal when she headed eBay.” <- This should tell anyone watching the California race a great deal. Whitman's a sloppy manager demonstrating poor budgeting skills. They don't call it 'fee bay' for nothing from her time there. Whitman has blown $120 million on her campaign and is still 5 points behind Jerry Brown.

    “For a while I was thinking government doesn’t deserve the negative reputation the public has,” he said. “But now I think maybe it does.” <- Seems Musk is finally thinking like a grown up. Put your cash into your rockets and your rocket team and get flying.

  • amightywind

    All that money and Mr. Musk is shocked that the government he can’t buy that subsidy. Only 1K to the GOP? Looks like he greased the wrong palms.
    If Mr. Musk is disillusioned now what will he think when the GOP begins to implement the ‘Pledge to America’? If Mr. Musk were smart, he’d pipe down and compete. He is already a marked man by the GOP.

  • Wodun

    Hard to expect a guy to give money to people who wont even meet with him.

    Dana Rohrabacher didn’t get any money.

  • Ahh windy, I think you were the inspiration for the Senators in Bill White’s book.

  • He is already a marked man by the GOP.

    And what are they going to do to him, tear up SpaceX’s COTS contract?

    Sabotage the Demo flights?

    I don’t think so Windy. You need to take your meds.

  • GeeSpace

    Really, is the amount of money Mr. Musk gives to Democratic or Republicans a “space” issue? Perhaps, there are more important issues for space development such as adequate funding level for NASA, the proper commercial-NASA relationship, etc.

    But then, some people like to argue about irreverent and unimportant issues. As they say, Boys will be Boys

  • Dennis Berube

    I tell you, our government is and has been bought out. Crooks from the top down, and it isnt just Musk, it is the whole damn bunch. They dip their fingers into every pot of money there is and get away with it. One is Social Security, there is a pile of IOUs, sitting there. will they ever give it back, probably not. Modern day thievery that get away with it. Sad state of affairs. As I said in another post. With all the money they will save by going commercial, they will probably think they can vote themselves in big raises in 2011…………………………. It is no longer government for the people, it is the people working for government.

  • Set it straight

    There’s really nothing Musk can do at this point to change the house bill. Not sure what is plans to accomplish other than cry to anyone that will listen to him.

  • Bennett

    How has it come to pass that when one of the great entrepreneurs of our time speaks frankly about the politics of an industry, he is accused of “crying”.

    I think that Elon Musk believes, and I agree with him, that anyone who has accomplished what he has in such a short period of time has the right to speak his mind about the machinations of the public servants that we elect and send to Washington.

    Especially when it involves the near-term future of HSF, and an aspect of his business that has a direct impact on our “superiority in space exploration. How hypocritical is it for our elected officials to think they have some sort of power over SpaceX?

    SpaceX embodies the very best of what our country was founded on, and all due respect should be shown to the man who founded this company. As a rapidly expanding employer, he deserves every break that our government can offer at this time.

    To do less is patently unpatriotic.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    It is a little bit sad that “one of the great entrepreneurs” is reduced to going to Washington with his hand out and then snarling when he doesn’t get as much of a subsidy as he thinks is his due.

  • Christopher Howard

    Lots of people give to candidates. What’s the deal with that? Oh, lets talk about his divorce, because we’re not entrepreneurs with more exciting things to do!

  • Didn’t any of these people (it’s a long list) take Poli-Sci 101 ?

    Should Republicans take the House Mr. Musk risks a future of carefully crafted bills that will somehow start to exclude SpaceX in favor of Boeing and traditional launch providers.

    Hopefully the contract process will have changed, which is more important, and again hopefully more dear to fiscal conservatives, than whether SpaceX survives on FED-$$$ and government contracts.

  • Robert G. Oler

    I think that this is extremely adroit by Musk and is a policy that I would recommend.

    It really wont change because it never does, but at least on the facade the entire notion of “business as usual” ie a lot of lobbying, gifts etc are going to be publically out of fashion for a bit as we all go through this excersize of who can cut the budget without chopping fat. Heck I see even sun tan John climbed into a very pressed “work short” to give the GOP joke of a a proposal (no specifics but a lot of promises)

    In the end what is Musk trump card and the lead anchor for the programs of record…is that Musk is flying and the POR is a bunch of overpriced view graphs…and NASA HSF exploration has failed to generate any real enthusiasim from the rest of the country.

    NASA will be down to a 15 billion dollar budget soon…and every dollar will count.

    The death panels are pulling the plug on the shuttle and Cx…

    Robert G. Oler

  • “is reduced to going to Washington with his hand out and then snarling when he doesn’t get as much of a subsidy as he thinks is his due.”

    Musk is lobbying for a commercial crew launch services competition in which SpaceX has the opportunity to compete. SpaceX is not guaranteed anything.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark R. Whittington wrote @ September 23rd, 2010 at 12:09 pm

    It is a little bit sad that “one of the great entrepreneurs”..

    it is OK you use to be a person who didnt like big government programs and now you are reduced to shilling for one…

    Robert G. Oler

  • Justin Kugler

    It appears that Mark has accepted Airbus’ argument to the WTO that having the government as a customer counts as an indirect subsidy.

  • amightywind

    I think that this is extremely adroit by Musk and is a policy that I would recommend.

    Nothing Musk has done in the last 9 months can be called ‘adroit’. Indeed, he has shown political naiveté. He attempted a desperate all or nothing power grab of the kind he observed in the democrat seizure of healthcare. I sure he figured that the time was right. Wrong. Obamaspace blew up in his face. He has managed to alienate the very people (Richard Shelby among others) that will soon chair the committee that oversees his funding. Not good. Meanwhile, Orbital, Lockmart, and Boeing have quietly lobbied on the sidelines and let the political battles resolve. They, not Musk, are now sitting pretty. No the personalization of SpaceX by Musk has served none of his stake holders. He is not Steve Jobs.

  • He attempted a desperate all or nothing power grab of the kind he observed in the democrat seizure of healthcare.

    “all or nothing”?

    You are out of your mind.

  • amightywind

    Rand Simberg wrote @ September 23rd, 2010 at 3:51 pm

    You are out of your mind.

    If you do not agree that Musk overreached in the Obamaspace scrum then you are not being honest, which would not be surprising given that your interests and his are closely aligned.

  • googaw

    It’s a good thing that Musk took the advice I’ve been giving to altspace/NewSpace for many years and started putting more effort into getting real space commerce contracts like Iridium. His days as a NASA contractor are numbered and he’s going to need all the private sector business he can get. Which is not a good thing for NASA but is certainly a good thing in the long run for SpaceX and real space development.

  • DCSCA

    amightywind wrote @ September 23rd, 2010 at 2:27 pm “Nothing Musk has done in the last 9 months can be called ‘adroit’. Indeed, he has shown political naiveté.” <- Correct. He is not 'Steve Jobs'… nor Werhner Von Braun, either. Most likely, he'll get SpaceX up and running with cargo flights and then sell out to an aerospace firm before the ISS is splashed. Just don't see him getting crewed vehicles up before Boeing.

  • Matt Wiser

    Musk didn’t help his case by comparing the GOP to the Soviet Politburo a while back. What goes around comes around. So watch as Boeing, L-M, and Orbital get contracts, and Space X gets left in the dust. Almightwind is correct on this. And as long as Space X was seen as the face of commercial crew, not Boeing or L-M, commercial crew had a big hill to climb in Congress. Someting Musk either ignored (to his cost) or dismissed (again, to his cost).

  • Beancounter from Downunder

    What rubbish you’re spouting googaw.
    It was hardly your advice he took. It’s his business and he runs things the way he decides.
    As far as being a NASA contractor, SpaceX has a CRS contract through to 2015 with options for additonal missions.

  • Beancounter from Downunder

    Wise up Matt. SpaceX doesn’t actually need NASA as a customer to prosper. They are competitive on the international market and are actually pretty much the price setter at the moment. The only thing they have to prove is reliability.

    So it’s actually more the other way around. Particularly if NASA’s budget starts to shrink as seems to becoming more likely day by day.

    On the whole of it, SpaceX are delivering and have positioned themselves very well for the future. CRS with NASA out to 2015; approx 50% of their launch manifest commercial customers; marketing arrangements now in place in Europe; and most recently in SpaceFlightNow: ‘In a statement released late Thursday, NASA announced it was awarding Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co., Orbital Sciences Corp., Space Exploration Technologies Corp., and United Launch Alliance a 10-year contract for rocket flights of agency spacecraft.’
    Yeah looks like a company in serious trouble – LOL

  • Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 23rd, 2010 at 10:21 pm

    “…So watch as Boeing, L-M, and Orbital get contracts, and Space X gets left in the dust.”

    $1.6 billion from CRS is not being “left in the dust.”

  • Coastal Ron

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 23rd, 2010 at 10:21 pm

    So watch as Boeing, L-M, and Orbital get contracts, and Space X gets left in the dust.

    You and others seem to be ignorant of government contracting procedures and how companies can protest awards – you have a lot to learn.

    If NASA creates a plain vanilla competition to get crew to the ISS, then SpaceX will have advantages that others don’t – real hardware, NASA ISS certification for the spacecraft they’ll bid (which they should have by that point), operational history for both their launcher and spacecraft, and of course, the lowest prices by far.

    Now NASA could decide to bid some other type of service, but anything other than a simple capsule will be far more complex & expensive, and they will probably be still building the Orion (a more complex capsule), so that would be hard to justify. Also, Obama and Bolden would only do such a thing if they were forced to, and I don’t see that happening.

    So let’s say NASA bids the plain vanilla ISS crew contract, and SpaceX does not win, even though they have all those advantages (product, schedule & cost). SpaceX would protest the award, and the GAO would step in. Now I don’t know if any of you remember the Air Force Tanker competition, but they are still trying to get a contract awarded 8 years and two competitions later. Some parts of the government do work in the favor of the people, and not the politicians.

    But really, who would NASA give the contract to? Boeing? Boeing gave more money to the Democratic Party than Musk/SpaceX, so I guess they would be out. I would wager that all the competitors have given to the Democratic Party, as well as the Republican Party (just like Boeing & Musk/SpaceX), so unless you think someone trash talking some generic person is reason to risk a GAO audit & media exposure for an agency that is 0.5% of the total budget, I don’t think much “retribution” will happen – you have to choose your battles…

  • Coastal Ron

    Ron wrote @ September 24th, 2010 at 12:10 am

    $1.6 billion from CRS is not being “left in the dust.”

    Not to mention the work that will come from the NASA Launch Services (NLS) II Contract, of which SpaceX will get some part of the $15B, 10-year contract.

  • It’s a good thing that Musk took the advice I’ve been giving to altspace/NewSpace for many years and started putting more effort into getting real space commerce contracts like Iridium.

    Wow.

    Your ego exceeds Elon’s by orders of magnitude if you think that he’s been paying any attention to anything that some weirdo on the Internet calling itself “Googaw” has been saying.

  • googaw

    Trouble is, Coastal, there is not going to be anything remotely like a “plain vanilla ISS crew contract.” Any such contract will have language incorporating shelves full of requirements. There are going to be emphatic but hopefully vague requirements written by Congressfolk like Senator Mikulski who after Challenger and Columbia are paranoid about the safety of their beloved astronauts. Then there are going to be copious requirements written by hundreds of NASA bureaucrats in compliance with the Congressional requirements. That is already inherent in the NASA bill language we’ve been discussing. Tons of opportunity for rent-seeking (that’s economist-speak for money and time wasted seeking government money) and for Congresscritters who feel that Musk has dissed them to shut him out.

    Which is another good reason to be happy that Musk has dared to tell the truth and call out these Republican establishment bastards for who they are.

    By gambling on the Democrats Musk won a nice fat contract in the short term but has lost most of his chances of having a strong relationship with NASA in the long term. Musk’s calling out of the current space committee Republicans is a cause to celebrate not only because in this business the truth in a ubiquitous atmosphere of stifling euphemisms is a breath of fresh air, but because SpaceX is a company I have increasingly been coming to admire, and the last thing I want to see is for them to become mired in the NASA astronaut bureaucracy. I think Musk has come to realize this too and with the Iridium contract he now has the opportunity to start distancing himself from the sordid business that is NASA contracting. Thus his increasingly blunt honesty.

    Even though Beancounter gratuitously insulted me I agree with him that there is tremendous potential for Falcon 9 to become the most competitive launcher in the international market and to prosper in as well as be a major cause of the coming price war. SeaLaunch + SpaceX = big trouble for ILS and especially Arianespace, who are screaming like stuck pigs about the coming “glut” (i.e. the increasing competition) in the real commercial launch business. And that’s where the real space development action is, not this NASA Cold War cathedral nonsense.

  • googaw

    BTW, here’s what I wrote back on March 27th. This was quite controversial in these parts last spring but it is now becoming just good common sense. With his recent comments Musk has practically “bowed out” of “Commercial” Crew, whether inadvertently or intentionally I do not know:

    SpaceX if it wins “Commercial” Crew will turn into a NASA zombie, a path similar to the one taken by the once entrepreneurial commercial space startup Orbital Sciences. The dream that SpaceX will lower launch costs will be lost, except in the very narrow sense that it will still probably come in much lower than Ares-1 would have. But as a NASA zombie it won’t come in significantly lower than Soyuz for HSF and it will no longer be competitive in the real commercial market for satellite launchers. If however SpaceX bows out of or loses its bid for “Commercial” Crew and focuses on other customers, NASA’s monopsonistic power and distorting incentives will diminish. Given its great development efficiencies so far, SpaceX will have very good shot at substantially lowering launch costs for real commerce. This would be of the greatest possible benefit to the long-term cause of space development as well as constituting a much-needed return of the U.S. to a competitive advantage in the real commercial launch market.

  • Robert Horning

    I’ve wondered sometimes how much of an “evil force” that SpaceX getting wrapped up in NASA contracts could hurt the company in the long run. Unfortunately for tempo that Elon Musk has put SpaceX into, I think the only potential contracts they can land to sustain that tempo are going to be government contracts.

    What I’m referring to here is the fact that SpaceX is ramping up the production of their vehicles and hiring employees all over the place. If the only customers that SpaceX was going to be trying for was private commercial contracts, this is the wrong strategy to be taking as there simply aren’t the customers (yet) to sustain such a company. I am suggesting that it is going to be taking the better part of a decade for the new price point that SpaceX is establishing to work its way through the space investment gurus to pitch the idea of commercial spaceflight opportunities to non-geeks (aka those not currently investing in spaceflight enterprises) and to justify the return on income (ROI).

    BTW, almost anybody should realize that the ROI on congressmen tends to be at least 100% and sometimes much, much more. Elon Musk getting into the Washington DC lobbying game simply is something that must be done if you are going to survive. Bill Gates made the huge mistake of dismissing Washington as a bunch of idiots who really didn’t matter to his company, and then he got the U.S. Department of Justice threatening to shut his company (Microsoft) down. Life was real awful for him and his company until he started playing the game, going to the cocktail circuit in DC and throwing money around with lobbying efforts. After that, for some reason the lawsuits by the DOJ seemed to disappear like the morning dew. It isn’t a pure coincidence either. Microsoft now has one of the largest lobbying presence in DC for any software company or for that matter any media company.

    All this reminds me of another immigrant that came to California trying to make it big in the “high tech” transportation arena. A group of investors put together about $2 million dollars from area investors in California and headed to Washington for the purpose of coming up with a new business. All $2 million were completely spend in the period of about six months trying to wine and dine congressmen and White House staffers. After that effort, they landed a ground breaking contract that was comparable to the Apollo project in scope in spite of the fact that they were flat broke, had only a single engineer, and no manufacturing facilities to speak of or even an office anywhere other than in the DC area.

    Who was it? Leland Stanford (the namesake of the university that bears his last name… well named after his son but that is splitting hairs). The project? The Trans-continental railroad that was approved during the Abraham Lincoln administration. At the time few thought it was even possible to build a railroad across the Rocky Mountains. Needless to say, Stanford was able to repay his investors with interest and keep a nice hunk of change for himself too.

    It pays to work in Washington even though the sausage factory sometimes looks absolutely horrible from time to time. The one thing I will give credit to Elon Musk here is that by being involved with the lawmakers in DC, he is at least not going to be having a surprise by having some new law show up that is going to shut his company down or keep it from at least being able to compete for commercial contracts. That was a huge problem that did happen with projects like the Conestoga rocket, where crazy things like NASA offering competing services on the Space Shuttle dried up any market for their rockets…. and something that Jim Benson fought his whole life too. These were good people with excellent technical skills and folks that should have succeeded decades ago at getting commercial spaceflight a reality. If for some reason Elon Musk is going to succeed where others failed, I think it is in part because he is paying attention to what is happening in Washington and at least making his presence felt.

  • David Teek

    I recall seeing Mr. Musk speak at a Responsive Space Conference about five years ago. At the time, he noted that he had Defense officials visiting his manufacturing plant about every week, but that to date, no one from NASA had even called. In describing his motivation for entering the space launch field, he stated that his goal was to help ensure that humanity could move out to other planets, as the first part of much broader expansion of our species into space.

    DoD did play a significant role in helping the company get its start by purchasing a set of flights, a smart customer investment that had relatively little program risk and high potential payoff once lower cost and operationally efficient platforms became available. But DoD did not have to manage the development, and so a more streamlined and robust approach was taken. NASA is proposing to piggyback on Mr. Musk’s personal investment (and DoD’s early adoption), and is funding demonstration flights to their spec to validate the capabilities, and through commercial crew, the development of new and modified elements to serve their requirements.

    I believe Mr. Musk will do quite well with or without NASA missions. I do not know how NASA will fare over the next decade if we are limited to procurement driven architectures and operations.

    I would advise the self-proclaimed conservative commentators to re-read all of those Ayn Rand tomes they have so prominently displayed on their bookshelves.

  • Coastal Ron

    googaw wrote @ September 24th, 2010 at 12:56 am

    there is not going to be anything remotely like a “plain vanilla ISS crew contract.” Any such contract will have language incorporating shelves full of requirements. There are going to be emphatic but hopefully vague requirements written by Congressfolk like…

    Sure, NASA could go that route, and the House bill certainly wants to go that route. But Bolden has stated that they want to go a far simpler route, one based on their experiences with Soyuz. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.

    By gambling on the Democrats Musk won a nice fat contract in the short term but has lost most of his chances of having a strong relationship with NASA in the long term.

    What fat, short term contract? The COTS/CRS contract from the Bush/Griffin years? Or did they damage themselves with NASA on the NLS II 10-year launch services contract NASA just put them on? I have no idea what you’re alluding to.

    And I don’t buy a lot of this “oh they greased the right palms” stuff for large competitive bids. One protest, and the GAO comes in and does a complete audit of the competition.

    SpaceX is winning work because of what they have done, and what they have bid. Sure they are a new launch provider entrant, but OSC is just getting going on large launchers too, so to a certain degree NASA is not looking for long pedigrees.

  • Coastal Ron

    googaw wrote @ September 24th, 2010 at 1:52 am

    With his recent comments Musk has practically “bowed out” of “Commercial” Crew

    I disagree. In fact, I think it shows that he is going compete vigorously in any “commercial crew” competitions NASA is allowed to hold.

    People keep forgetting that by next year SpaceX will have their commercial crew capsule certified by NASA for ISS operations – just not for carrying crew. But adding crew to an existing vehicle is not as complicated as designing, building and certifying a completely new vehicle like CST-100. SpaceX has a lot of advantages for any commercial crew competition, and they won’t let the opportunity pass.

  • DCSCA

    Matt Wiser wrote @ September 23rd, 2010 at 10:21 pm
    “Musk didn’t help his case by comparing the GOP to the Soviet Politburo a while back.” <– Indeed. He'll most liekly get cargoed craft up and running then sell his interest in SpaceX to one of the major aerospace firms. At this point, SpaceX seems to be moving further from, not closer to, flying crewed Dragons. Doubt he'll ever actually do it as long as the calculus shows the cost of failure outweighs the value of success. And that's always been the hurdle- the 'giant leap' as it were– for commercial human spaceflight to overcome.

  • DCSCA

    Beancounter from Downunder wrote @ September 23rd, 2010 at 11:10 pm “Wise up Matt. SpaceX doesn’t actually need NASA as a customer to prosper.” <– Yet they seem to 'need' NASA just to get their rockets off their U.S. taxpayer-refurbished launch pad to try to be a success. Could have built his own launching facilities in a number of places around the world but chose not to. Without the cargo contract to haul freight up to the ISS, they'd be going no place fast given their limited experience in actualy flight operations. They need NASA now even if its a bitter ill to swallow.

  • Space Follower

    DCSCA wrote @ September 26th, 2010 at 8:11 pm

    SpaceX seems to be moving further from, not closer to, flying crewed Dragons. Doubt he’ll ever actually do it as long as the calculus shows the cost of failure outweighs the value of success.

    Explain. All public accounts show they are no shying from using their capsule for cargo or crew.

    DCSCA wrote @ September 26th, 2010 at 8:18 pm

    their U.S. taxpayer-refurbished launch pad to try to be a success. Could have built his own launching facilities in a number of places around the world but chose not to.

    SpaceX plans to spend $50M on their Vandenberg launch site, and they have said that is about what they spent on their LC40 one. Why do you think the site was refurbished at taxpayer expense?

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