rich 1.0 Action Network https://actionnetwork.org <link href='https://actionnetwork.org/css/style-embed-v3.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' /><script src='https://actionnetwork.org/widgets/v6/letter/save-nasa?format=js&source=widget'></script><div id='can-letter-area-save-nasa' style='width: 100%'><!-- this div is the target for our HTML insertion --></div> HollywoodDemocrats.com https://actionnetwork.org/groups/hd https://actionnetwork.org//images/generic_facebook.jpg Already Elon Musk’s SpaceX-Starlink has received at least $19.8 billion dollars from NASA and the Department of Defense to build up the U.S. space program. Musk now owns half of the nation’s functioning satellites. In 2023, more than 1,900 of the over 2,100 objects launched by the U.S. were Starlink satellites. Ultimately Musk is aiming to have over 40,000 satellites in orbit. Starlink satellites play a crucial role in battlefield communications in Ukraine, giving private citizen Musk outsized influence over our ally’s military operations -- which he has not hesitated to use. Now Musk wants to privatize NASA. Cutting out that pesky “middleman” and fully privatizing space exploration would give Musk unparalleled military and civilian power to gather and control the dissemination of information, while eliminating enforcement of regulations supporting safety, transparency, and fair practices. Our country’s space program should not be driven by the whims of billionaires -- or worse, by their for-profit goals of resource extraction, satellite expansion and lunar manufacturing facilities. NASA is critical to maintaining a long-term space program that isn't the private property of a billionaire boys club. Musk also wants to control NASA and its space program to eliminate competition. NASA currently promotes private competition by having corporations and the billionaires that own them bid for projects. That’s how Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has beat out SpaceX for contracts, receiving at least $11.5 billion dollars from NASA and the U.S. Space Force. Let's be clear. The same billionaires obsessed with dominating the future of space exploration have made their fortunes in industries that have not only failed to address the global climate crisis, they often made the growing disaster much worse. With the black soot these rockets inject directly to the Earth’s upper atmosphere causing warming at 500 times the rate of a commercial airliner and other atmosphere-wrecking pollutants -- include nitrogen oxides, aluminum oxide, hydrochloric acid, and chlorine -- depleting our fragile ozone layer as well, these same billionaires cannot be trusted to run a space program developing other planets without oversight and regulations to rein them in. Don't let Elon Musk privatize America's space program. Sign and send your direct messages demanding Congress save NASA now https://actionnetwork.org/letters/save-nasa