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Elon Musk has a history of making promises to rapidly deliver technological breakthroughs, only for them to end up taking longer than predicted or to fail to materialize.
Among these are his promises for fully autonomous self-driving cars or tunnels under Los Angeles to solve traffic congestion. Now some federal government officials worry that his pledges for landing astronauts on the moon will suffer similar delays.
That is why one of the largest federal contracts Mr. Musk has ever secured is now under intense scrutiny: a multibillion agreement with NASA for this crewed mission to the moon, the first in more than five decades.
The plan to invite private companies to develop a lunar lander for NASA was kicked off with much fanfare during President Trump’s first term, with a target of completing the mission by last year.
Other parts of the NASA moon mission are nearly ready, after their own delays and cost overruns, and are set to be subject to a full-scale flight around the moon with astronauts next year. But SpaceX’s lunar lander project is now so far behind schedule that there are increasing doubts the United States will beat China, which has its own plan with a targeted landing date of 2030, back to the moon.
The concerns, which have reached the White House, follow the falling out between Mr. Musk and President Trump, which led to a call by Mr. Trump and others inside the administration to at least initially look for SpaceX contracts to pare back or cancel.
