President Donald Trump‘s new budget proposal would give SpaceX, Elon Musk‘s rocket company, a huge payday—despite making steep cuts to many areas of government spending.
Trump said in the proposal, sent to Congress Friday, that he wants to make “a down-payment on the development and deployment of a Golden Dome for America, a next-generation missile defense shield” that SpaceX will help build, The New York Times reported.
That project alone could generate billions in federal contracts for the company, the Times observed.
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The spending plan also makes Musk’s ambitions to reach Mars a top priority for the government, arguing that “U.S. space dominance” will “strengthen U.S. national security and strategic advantage.”
While slashing NASA’s budget by nearly 25 percent ($6 billion), Trump’s plan would re-center the space agency around two primary goals: sending astronauts to the Moon and to Mars.
Establishing a human colony on the Red Planet is the exact reason that Musk created SpaceX 23 years ago. He has argued that it will help save humanity from extinction.
“Becoming multiplanetary is critical to ensuring the long-term survival of humanity and all life as we know it,” he wrote on X last year.
NASA’s new budget sets aside $1 billion for sending humans to Mars, although it does not specify how exactly that money would be used, the Times reported. The agency’s cuts hit many of its unmanned missions, such as climate-monitoring satellites.
Musk—a multibillionaire who also owns Tesla and X—has become one of Trump’s biggest backers and has led the White House’s effort to eliminate spending it disagrees with as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Beginning in May, he is set to return much of his focus to running his many companies. Tesla stock has plummeted during his stint in the White House.
Trump’s budget plan, which quickly earned the endorsement of House Speaker Mike Johnson, slashes $163 billion from the overall budget.
The Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health would both have their funding cut by around half, yet the plan sets aside $500 million for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiatives.
The proposal also takes aim at education, wiping out $12 billion in funding. Much of that comes from Title 1 schools, which primarily serve low-income students.
One area that would see boosts under Trump’s plan is defense spending. The president wants to raise the military budget by 13 percent, to $1.01 trillion.
