Is Elon Musk jealous? Engineer calls out SpaceX silence after NASA Artemis II launch success

On April 1, 2026, Nasa’s Artemis II launched from Earth on a ten-day journey to the Moon. The first manned mission to the Moon in over 50 years. The buzz around Artemis II is high. More than 400,000 people attended the launch at the Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA. And social media is flooded with Artemis II as well. On YouTube, the launch gained over 17 million views. While many big names, such as Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apollo 13 actor Tom Hanks, have commented on this mission, one individual has been inconspicuously quiet, SpaceX chief Elon Musk.

Musk is arguably one of the most vocal proponents of space exploration. He has often discussed the possibility of a colony on Mars in the near future. His company, SpaceX, has already challenged Nasa over relatively lower rocket costs with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy reusable rockets. SpaceX is currently testing the Starship, which would be the most powerful rocket humanity has ever built.

Despite Musk’s keen interest in space exploration, he has not made any public comments on Artemis II. If you look at Elon’s X account, where he usually makes unfiltered remarks, there is no mention of Artemis II. But why is that? The internet might have a theory.

Aerospace engineer says Elon Musk may be jealous of Artemis II

On X, an aerospace engineer, Christopher David shared a prediction he made five years ago. David stated back then, “By the way, Starship will never make it into orbit.” It appears that Christopher may be referring to a full orbital flight as the ship reached orbital velocity in March 2024.

In one comment, David explained the reason for his prediction. He added that the Starship was “too heavy. Both stages can't be reusable and still be able to put an appreciable payload into LEO (Low Earth Orbit).”

One person wrote on David’s post, “It's strange how the Tesla/SpaceX Twittersphere seems very muted about the successful NASA Artemis launch.” The aerospace engineer claimed, “Yes. They're jealous.”

Another user joked that Elon Musk was simply not qualified to make claims on space flight. The person wrote, “He [Elon Musk] has never done an experiment or set foot in laboratory his whole life. The guy steals credit & put his name on research papers/patents of his employees b/c he owns the company.”

Is Elon Musk really jealous of Artemis II?

Elon Musk has not publicly commented on Artemis II. Though it is unclear if the tech billionaire is actually envious of Nasa’s mission.

Scrolling through Musk’s X account, there is just one mention of Artemis II – where a user compares responses from ChatGPT and Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok. Elon requoted this post and wrote, “Grok.”

SpaceX lost Artemis 3 contract

In October 2025, Nasa reopened the contract for Artemis III that was originally awarded to SpaceX. The $4.4 billion contract would’ve led to Nasa using a lunar variant of the Starship for Artemis III, which was scheduled for 2027. However, Nasa broke the contract citing delays in SpaceX’s development.

This could be a potential reason for Musk’s silence over Artemis II. Artemis II uses Nasa’s own Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

In July 2024, Elon Musk had stated, “Starship offers a path to far greater payload to the Moon than is currently anticipated in the Artemis program.”

Nasa plans to land astronauts on the lunar surface as part of the Artemis IV mission, which is expected to take off in 2028.