On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration levied proposed fines of hundreds of millions of dollars against SpaceX for violations related to rocket launches last year. Soon after, Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of the commercial rocket and satellite company, threatened legal action to fight the citations.
“SpaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach,” Musk wrote on X, the social platform he owns.
The fines, worth more than $630,000, are related to unapproved plans used during two SpaceX rocket launches last year. The first incident, from last May at Florida’s Cape Canaveral, was over a revised communications plan, in which SpaceX added an unauthorized new launch control room and removed a readiness poll from its procedures. Two months later, SpaceX used an unapproved rocket propellant facility as its fuel supplier at a launch at the Kennedy Space Center, the FAA alleged.
SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Safety drives everything we do at the FAA, including a legal responsibility for the safety oversight of companies with commercial space transportation licenses,” FAA Chief Counsel Marc Nichols said in a statement about the proposed fines. “Failure of a company to comply with the safety requirements will result in consequences.” The agency, however, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Musk’s legal threat.
Musk says a lot of things on X, but in this case, his threat of legal retaliation may not be an empty one. The company has sued the government multiple times in the past. In January, SpaceX filed suit against the National Labor Relations Board, after the board accused the company of illegally firing employees who sent a letter to company executives calling Musk “a distraction and embarrassment.” In its suit, SpaceX claimed the NLRB’s structure violated the U.S. Constitution, and sought to block the case against SpaceX. The company used a similar tactic last year, suing the government in an attempt to block a Department of Justice case that claimed SpaceX refused to hire refugees. And back in 2014, the company sued the government after the Air Force awarded a lucrative contract to a competitor, instead of granting it to the highest bidder.
Musk’s FAA sparring comes during a week in which he’s also landed in hot water over his posts on X. Earlier this week, after an attempted assassination on Former President Donald Trump, Musk posted that “no one is even trying” to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, along with a thinking emoji. Musk later deleted the tweet and suggested he was joking. The White House condemned the post, calling it “irresponsible.”
Musk’s vows to sue, as well as his past legal action, also underscores a potentially more complicated relationship with the government for the billionaire CEO. Trump has said that if he wins a second term, he would enlist Musk to head a “government efficiency commission.”
