- Elon Musk and Donald Trump are both enthusiastic about space exploration opportunities amid a desire to slash regulations.
- It's not yet clear how powerful Musk's role in the new Trump administration will be.
- Still, Musk's influence could advance his business plans, including sending Starships to Mars.
Now that president-elect Donald Trump is set to return to power in the US, Elon Musk's plans for sending humans beyond Earth's orbit may be more likely to come to fruition.
Space industry experts told Business Insider that Musk's influence over Trump could help advance his business interests, including sending the first crewed mission to Mars.
"I'm hugely optimistic about what's going to happen in space now," Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, told Business Insider.
Hanlon's optimism isn't unfounded, especially if Trump's second term focuses on space as much as his first.
During his first term, from 2017 to 2021, Trump's administration founded the Space Force, re-launched the National Space Council, and established NASA's Artemis program. This program is set to return astronauts to the moon and lay the groundwork for the first crewed mission to Mars.
But space isn't the only interest Trump and Musk share. They also want to slash government regulations.
Musk's 'Department of Government Efficiency'
Trump has said that he would cut 10 regulations for every new one his administration creates.
Musk and his businesses, meanwhile, have clashed with regulators, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration.
"There is a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go," Musk wrote on X after Trump announced that he planned to put the billionaire at the helm of a new "department of government efficiency."
It's unclear how much influence Musk would have over regulations if this department came to fruition. Trump's trust in Musk to run such a department, however, is a testament to the pair's burgeoning relationship.
The two men teamed up on the campaign trail, with Musk contributing millions to Trump's reelection campaign and appearing with him at a rally in Pennsylvania.
In his election-night victory speech, Trump praised Musk for SpaceX's Starship vehicle, designed to shuttle the first humans to Mars, and for the company's Starlink internet satellites, which are designed to offer fast, cheap internet to remote locations worldwide.
Musk also joined a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday — underscoring how influential Musk could be once Trump returns to office, Axios reported.
Whether that influence translates to Trump founding a new "department of government efficiency" for Musk, though, is unclear.
SpaceX and Musk did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Trump's campaign said that Musk's ideas and efficiency will benefit federal bureaucracy but his role in Trump's administration remains under wraps.
"It's a crazy situation, but you can't just create a new department," Deborah Sivas, the director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford, told BI. She said Congress would have to approve it, which may be more likely since Republicans won the Senate majority.
Changing a government agency's powers or rules, Sivas said, requires making new rules or passing a law through Congress. That can take months, and it's not guaranteed to work.
So, it's unlikely that Musk would be able to single-handedly eliminate key steps in regulatory processes, like the typical environmental review requirement for building a new rocket launchpad.
"I think Elon Musk will be more likely in the background, whispering in his ear," Sivas said of the billionaire's relationship with Trump.
"Is he going to be able to influence space policy? Yes, no question," Hanlon said, adding that she sees that as a "good thing" because of Musk's experience.
In other arenas, like environmental regulation, Sivas isn't so sure.
"I feel like he should stay in his business lane and stay out of the government lane," Sivas said. "When you put those two together, it's like putting church and state together."
Smoothing potholes on the road to Mars
Even if Musk can't change regulations, a space-friendly Trump administration could smooth the path to Musk's goal of building a city on Mars.
Musk recently said that he plans to launch Starships to Mars for the first time in just two years. If those flights go well, he said that the first human crews would follow four years from now.
"That's a pretty ambitious timeline," George Nield, former associate administrator of the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, told BI. To meet it would probably require "different regulatory frameworks or contractual arrangements than we've used in the past," he added.
"If anybody can do it, it will be Elon Musk," Hanlon said. But the government can help, she said, by making regulators more efficient.
To help even further, she added, "It can become a policy of the US government to support commercial flight to Mars."
With Trump's interest in Starship, the chances of that look better than ever.
Regulations aren't the only obstacle. There are still a lot of technical hurdles to overcome before we can reach Mars, Nield said.
The moon, on the other hand, is more achievable, and Trump has had his eye on it. Weeks after Musk endorsed Trump, the president-elect told reporters that the moon was the first step toward his ultimate goal to reach Mars.
The next moon landing
For the Artemis program's first human moon landing, NASA plans to launch four astronauts toward the moon using its Space Launch System and Orion spaceship.
In lunar orbit, the ship would meet up with SpaceX's Starship, which would carry two astronauts to the moon's surface, putting boots in the lunar dust for the first time since 1972.
The date for that mission has been repeatedly pushed back, with September 2026 being NASA's current target.
There's no indication that Trump is considering this, but if he wants a faster moon landing, he could ditch the NASA hardware and send astronauts aboard Starship alone, Nield said.
"If we see rapid progress with Starship and encouragement from the administration and Congress, I don't see any reason why that couldn't happen in a small number of years," Nield said.