This week, both the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA quietly reached out to competitors of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, urging them to accelerate the development of alternative launch systems following a high-profile social media clash between President Donald Trump and Musk.

According to The Washington Post, officials grew increasingly alarmed during the exchange, in which President Trump threatened to revoke government contracts from Musk-led companies like SpaceX and Tesla. In response, Musk briefly announced that SpaceX would begin decommissioning its “Dragon” spacecraft — a critical component in NASA’s ability to send astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station — before walking back the statement. The move reportedly shocked officials at both NASA and the Pentagon.

“At first, watching it unfold on social media was almost entertaining,” said one NASA official. “But when Musk said he’d decommission Dragon, it suddenly got very serious — even frightening.” A similar sense of unease was echoed within the Department of Defense.

In the wake of the incident, the U.S. government has contacted at least four commercial space companies — Sierra Space, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin — to assess the readiness of their launch systems for potential government missions, amid growing concerns about SpaceX’s stability and dependability under Musk’s leadership.