After SpaceX completed its historic private spaceflight on Saturday, CEO Elon Musk snapped a photo with President Joe Biden, who has not yet mentioned the company’s achievements and its dedicated cockpit crew.
“The US president recognizes four American astronauts who have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for St. Jude,” said one of Musk’s 60 million followers on Twitter, a social networking platform. So I declined. What is your theory of the cause? when? “
Musk replied, “He’s still asleep.”
As CNBC previously reported, SpaceX returned the Crew Dragon spacecraft safely from orbit yesterday. After spending three days in space, a capsule brought four members of the Inspiration 4 mission back to Earth.
One of the main goals of the Inspiration4 mission was to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It grossed $160.2 million on Saturday. After Inspiration4 was nominated, Musk personally pledged to donate $50 million, bringing the campaign total to $210 million.
The White House and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Senior executives from NASA and SpaceX congratulated Mask and SpaceX on the Inspiration 4 mission. SpaceX competitors acknowledged that Jeff Bezos shared on social media with praise from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Blue Origin and other Musk competitors.
This was SpaceX’s first private spaceflight by a non-professional crew. In addition, the mission included the first black woman to pilot a spacecraft, the youngest American to ever become an astronaut, and the first woman to fly in space with a prosthetic limb. rice field.
Musk recently said he wanted to “stay out of politics,” but his Sunday banter showed a willingness to hack into the Democratic president and repeat the right-wing taunts at Biden.
During the 2020 campaign, former President Donald Trump often insulted then-candidate Biden by calling him “Sleepy Joe.”
Trump recently sent sarcasm wishes to Biden ahead of his June summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Good luck to Biden in dealing with President Putin. Do not sleep during the meeting. I offer him my sincere respect,” he said in an emailed statement at the time.
SpaceX generally has a good relationship with the federal government. For example, it won a $2.89 billion contract to build a lunar lander for the next NASA crew member, beating Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Lydus’ affiliate Dainetics. SpaceX has sent 10 astronauts to the International Space Station so far.
However, SpaceX is under investigation by the Justice Department after it was accused of discriminating against job seekers on the basis of citizenship. This investigation began during the Trump administration.
In addition to his responsibilities at SpaceX, Musk is also CEO of electric car manufacturer Tesla. (Tesla is also a supplier to SpaceX.)
In the post, he recently complained about the Biden administration’s proposal to grant an additional $4,500 incentive to some buyers of new small electric passenger cars. One of the clauses of the proposal is that electric cars must be produced locally by the union.
The company operates a battery plant in Nevada, an automobile assembly plant in California, and is building another plant outside of Austin, Texas, but Tesla is the only major non-integrated manufacturing plant here. American car manufacturer.
“It’s not clear how this will help US taxpayers,” a Ford/UAW lobbyist wrote while manufacturing an electric car in Mexico. “It’s not clear how this will help US taxpayers,” Musk said on Twitter on Sept. 12.
In the 2021 annual US Auto Index published by Cars.com, Tesla’s popular Model 3 electric sedan overtook its Model Y crossover for third place.
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