Elon Musk’s days of smoking weed in public are, apparently, over.
To be fair, it was just that one time, when Musk appeared to be smoking weed on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, but it was enough to ruffle NASA’s feathers. And NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said Musk will not be doing it again, Marina Koren at The Atlantic reported Thursday.
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“I will tell you that was not helpful, and that did not inspire confidence, and the leaders of these organizations need to take that as an example of what to do when you lead an organization that’s going to launch American astronauts,” Bridenstine told Koren at a meeting at NASA’s headquarters Thursday.
Musk is the CEO of SpaceX which does a lot of contractor work for NASA, including building new vehicles (alongside Boeing) to bring NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in the coming years. And according to Bridenstine, a healthy workplace culture — both at NASA and its contractors — is important in order for everything to go smoothly.
Last week, after a Washington Post report, NASA said it plans to conduct a “cultural assessment study” with its commercial partners. Now, Bridenstine said that he personally ordered the reviews, and that he wanted to that even before Musk’s public weed smoking incident, describing the reviews as “necessary and appropriate.”
The primary motivation behind these measures according to Bridenstine is avoiding accidents such as the Columbia and Challenger space shuttle disasters. These accidents stemmed from technological issues, but Bridenstine also pointed out that poor workplace culture may have contributed.
As for Musk, Bridenstine said he recently spoke with him and that he understands his behavior was inappropriate.
“You won’t be seeing that again,” Bridenstine said.
