In the heat of the moment, Elon Musk threatened to decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and then he took it back. In doing so, however, the rocket billionaire dragged NASA into his messy breakup with Donald Trump, with the agency’s access to orbit now at stake.

SpaceX's rockets ferry US astronauts to the International Space Station. Its Starlink satellite constellation blankets the globe with broadband, and the company is embedded in some of the Pentagon's most sensitive projects,