AP/Evan Vucci
- SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sought to pique Donald Trump’s interest in space colonization shortly after he was elected.
- Musk has previously asserted that mortals need to leave Earth in order to preserve humanity.
- He was one of several tech titans who courted Trump early on, according to an excerpt from the revealing book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by journalist Michael Wolff.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was interested in getting a newly elected President Donald Trump on board with his company’s mission to explore other planets, according to an excerpt from a new book on the Trump administration that has dominated headlines this week.
Among the many claims made in Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” one passage described a scene at Trump Tower where then-president-elect Trump was taking meetings with tech titans like the Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
According to the excerpt, Musk had sought to get Trump interested in SpaceX’s “race to Mars,” ostensibly an effort to keep his company front-of-mind in the broad scope of national space exploration.
In response to the excerpt, a SpaceX spokesperson emphasized to Business Insider on Thursday night that Musk is focused on “making humans multi-planetary,” a goal that Musk has been vocal about in the past. Last month he said it was “high time that humanity went beyond Earth.”
“Should have a moon base by now and sent astronauts to Mars,” Musk wrote in a December 13 tweet. “The future needs to inspire.”
Trump has previously expressed interest in jump-starting the national space program. He signed the NASA Transition Authorization Act in March last year, a law calling for a $ 19.5 billion yearly budget for NASA.
The law also requests that the space agency put together a plan to get humans to Mars by 2033.
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