Elon Musk wants to cut the federal budget, like he cut the cost of space launches.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carrino. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Elon Musk to co-lead a new Department of Government

Efficiency. The CEO of X, Tesla, and SpaceX does have a record of ringing efficiencies out of his

businesses. But the move raises many questions, like

should someone whose company's benefit from federal dollars have a hand in making budget decisions?

SpaceX alone has secured about 15.4 billion in federal contracts over the last decade,

helping it become the most dominant player in the industry. So just how has SpaceX rocketed ahead of the competition?

And can anyone catch up? We asked Ashley Vance, a reporter at Bloomberg Business Week,

an author of When the Heavens Went on sale. He pointed to the innovation

of reusable rockets, an achievement on spectacular display when SpaceX tested its starship system

last month. For most of the history of rockets, they've been disposable. It's not like a plane.

We're used to planes obviously going back and forth and you don't throw them away.

So about 15 years ago, SpaceX started working on this idea that you could land.

Usually these rockets divide into two stages.

And the biggest one that people see is the first stage.

That's kind of the bulk of the rocket, the tower.

And so they decided they wanted to try to land that back on Earth.

And about a decade ago, after five years of work, they really figured it out, started landing

this booster back.

This is on their Falcon 9 rocket, which is a bit smaller.

And they've been doing it ever since. And they're really

the only company that has figured this reusability out. And is this kind of the main component

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