Musk vs Trump: Elon Musk Fan Ian Miles Cheon asks him to move the space program to the VAE | World News – Times of India

There is always one tweet that distils geopolitical fantasy in 280 characters. This time it came from Elon Musk Loyalist Ian Miles Cheong:“Elon Musk just has to move his entire SpaceX operation to the United Arab Emirates. The VAE is at the forefront of technological progress and the climb of humanity to the stars. “The idea sounds far -fetched. But it also speaks to something very real: the growing ambition of the VAE to become a serious player in the Global Space Race, just as Musk is increasingly disillusioned with Washington and alienates from his on-a-again political ally, Donald Trump.

A gap on the edge of a job

The Musk-Trump relationship, once a spectacle of anti-establishment synergy, has hit turbulence. Musk, the poster boy for public-private innovation for a long time, turned sharp against Trump’s newest blown-up federal expenditure account and called it a ‘disgusting horror’. Trump, always retribution, suggested that the US could save ‘billions’ by cutting the federal contracts of Musk. In Maga-Speak that is a declaration of war.While Tesla and X shares are refueling and deleting more than $ 150 billion in market value, Musk threatened the Dragon Capsule, the spacecraft that connects the earth with the international space station. That message came only a few minutes after Trump canceled the cancellation of SpaceX subsidies. For a short moment, the most influential entrepreneur in the world seemed ready to break a job, not only from the earth, but from America.That was when the chat came in.

A desert with dreams of the stars

While the Musk Trump burns bromance on X, the United Arab Emirates is quiet and not so quiet, building the infrastructure of space nation. The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC) in Dubai is now the home of a replica Falcon 9 -Booster, a symbolic tribute to Musk’s Engineering Triumph. In 2020, the VAE launched its Hoopset to Mars, making it the first Arabic nation to start an interplanetary mission. It reached Martian Orbit in 2021.Unlike many space programs that started with the attitude of the Cold War, the ambitions of the VAE are rooted in an economic and technological vision in the long term. The Mars 2117 project introduces itself a human settlement on the red planet within a century. The country has invested heavily in satellite technology, astronaut training (two astronauts from the VAE have now flown to space) and international partnerships with NASA, Roscosmos and Jaxa.And the most crucial is that it has money. Oil money. Sovereine wealth fund money. The type of money that a huge spacex relocation could theoretically be bank roles, if only the American export laws allowed it.

Reality check: Can Musk really move?

While the fantasy of a SpaceX launch site in Abu Dhabi arouses excitement, it affects a hard wall called Itar, international traffic in weapon regulations. Aerospace technology such as Falcon Rockets and Dragon Capsules is tightly controlled by the US government, mainly because of the work of SpaceX with NASA and the Pentagon. Moving activities abroad should navigate through a minefield of national security laws, fights of intellectual property and contract obligations.Then there is the infrastructure: SpaceX’s launch platforms in Florida and Texas, the Starlink implementation network and the deep entanglement with the American military industrial complex. Even for someone who is as unpredictable as Musk, uprooting a complete space ecosystem is more fever dream than flight plan.But what is serious, and worth seeing is how fast the idea caught fire. Because when powerful partnerships fall apart, when the emperor of disruption turns in the emperor of Maga, the imagination fills the vacuum. And the VAE, with its deep pockets and deeper ambitions, is perfectly ready to be the world’s favorite hypothetical.

A convenience marriage, recovered

The collapse of the Musk Trump Dynamic is more than just a technical billionaire who separates with a former president. It symbolizes the end of a political alliance that once seemed the future of American populism. Musk was the brain, Trump de Brawn. Their combined contempt for bureaucracy made them the heroes of a Silicon Valley – Smels – Talk Radio -Voter Base.But now? Trump accuses Musk of “losing” after his subsidies started to disappear. Musk revenge on quoting home republicans and teasing a central third party. Their shared fantasy to dismantle the “deep state” has been transferred to small polls and social media Jabs. And in that vacuum the VAE emerged, not as a savior, but as a symbol of what a future -oriented, well -funded and ideological agnostic space agenda could look like.

Between hope and hype

The truth is that Elon Musk does not go to the Emirates quickly. But the fact that people think he could be is proof of what the UAE has succeeded in building, credibility. In the period of two decades, the Oil -rich sandbox moved to serious competitions in the heavenly posts. The universities train space engineers. The astronauts fly with NASA. The space center has a waiting list for international collaborations.So, while the dragon capsule remains on American soil, the battle for the future of space may not be limited to the US, Russia and China. The VAE is still in the early innings, but it plays to win.And what about Musk and Trump? Their cold war is not nearly over yet. But in the ultrasounds of that Fallout, a new competition has quietly entered the Arena, bathed in desert light, focused on the stars.