Thiel's efforts (with help from Newt Gingrich and former Republican Congressman Robert Walker) didn't go to waste: ex-NASA official Charles Miller, a proponent of commercial space, has just been given a seat in Trump's landing team. WSJ says the incoming administration is also expected to bring in other pro-private space personnel. The names floating around include Alan Lindenmoyer, the former chief of NASA's commercial space taxi program, and Alan Stern, head of the New Horizons mission and chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

That said, not everyone's happy with this development. The government's legacy contractors are reportedly accusing Thiel and Musk of pushing for commercial space for their own financial gain. Thiel, one of Musk's PayPal co-founders, was one of SpaceX's earliest investors. WSJ clarifies that this landing team won't exactly be in charge of running NASA under the Trump administration, so it could still go either way. However, they can exert their influence, help recruit like-minded personnel and even stay on to make decisions for the space agency.