During a cabinet meeting on Thursday inside the White House, President Donald Trump called attention to several model rockets on the table before him. They included an Atlas V, a Falcon 9, a Space Launch System, and more. The president seemed enthused to see the launch vehicles. "Before me are some rocket ships," the president said. "You haven't seen that for this country in a long time."

Then, in remarks probably best characterized as spur of the moment, the president proceeded to absolutely demolish the government's own effort to build rockets by noting the recent launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket. He cited the cost as $80 million. (The list price on SpaceX's website is $90 million.)

"I noticed the prices of the last one they say cost $80 million," Trump said. "If the government did it, the same thing would have cost probably 40 or 50 times that amount of money. I mean literally. When I heard $80 million, I'm so used to hearing different numbers with NASA.''

NASA has not, in fact, set a price for flying the SLS rocket. But Ars has previously estimated that, including the billions of dollars in development cost, the per-flight fees for the SLS rocket will probably be close to $3 billion. Indeed, the development costs of SLS and its ground systems between now and its first flight could purchase 86 launches of the privately developed Falcon Heavy rocket. So President Trump's estimate of NASA's costs compared to private industry does not appear to be wildly off the mark.

Striking remarks

According to one source, these remarks caught senior NASA leaders—including acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot—off guard. Trump did ultimately try to soften the blow. "NASA is making tremendous strides," he added. But soon, the president returned to praising private investment in rockets by the likes of Elon Musk and SpaceX, whom he named, and Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin rocket company, whom he did not name.

"We're using a lot of private money, a lot of people that love rockets and they're rich," Trump said. "So they're going to be a little less rich probably, but a lot of rockets are going up. And we're really at the forefront—nobody's doing what we're doing. And I don't know if you saw last—with Elon—with the rocket booster where they're coming back down. To me, that was more amazing than watching the rocket go up, because I've never seen that before. Nobody's seen that before, where they're saving the boosters, and they came back without wings, without anything. They landed so beautifully. So we're really at the forefront and we're doing it in a very private manner.''

These are striking remarks by the president, who is correct when he notes that the vertical landing of two rockets, like what occurred during the Falcon Heavy launch, has never happened before. Perhaps even bolder, however, are his comments about the comparatively cheap flight costs of privately developed rockets.

NASA and the US Congress have long maintained that its Space Launch System, which will make its maiden flight no earlier than 2020, is necessary to further the US spaceflight enterprise. But here, Trump seems to be siding with commercial space advocates, who say that, while rockets like the Falcon Heavy may be slightly less capable than the SLS, they come at a drastically reduced price that will enable much quicker, broader exploration of the Solar System.

Until now, the National Space Council that formed during Trump's presidency has played the role of a neutral arbiter between NASA's traditional, higher-cost contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin and newer, leaner companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin that are seeking to cut the cost of access to space. Whether the president's comments today will move the space council in a firmer direction is unclear.