This honestly wouldn’t surprise me.
Musk has the ear of the president, and it’s not like Trump gives a shit about space. He’ll rubber stamp whatever Elon wants when it comes to the launch industry, and I didn’t think I have to explain to anyone why cancelling SLS would be good for SpaceX’s bottom line.
Frankly, I think 50/50 odds are way too generous. More like 80/20 in favor of SLS being scraped and access to space being fully privatized for a generation.
I get the hate for Musk, but honestly the SLS program should have been already terminated. It has not yet delivered anything, it is overbudget of orders of magnitude, and even if it will deliver something, it will be orders of magnitude more expensive.
Paraphrased from u/Jodo42 in The Other Place:
Step 1: Eric Berger reports something will happen in spaceflight before other organizations. (You are here)
Step 2: “Berger is a liar and a d*ckrider, this is nonsense”
Step 3: Government organization confirms they are “considering their options”; meltdown begins.
Step 4: Government organization makes the only sensible decision. It’s all Elon’s fault.
We will just have to wait and see what happens. The next four years will be… interesting, to say the least.
