Not sure though. SpaceX is a federal contractor. And to be at the helm of a company with federal access, you might need a clean record. When Musk was smoking pot on radio, the AirForce had to look into it to see if there was any actions they needed to take.

Why didn't they? He was committing a federal crime.

You don't want to have to go hat in hand to the Russians for RD-180 engines to launch your national security payloads (which the Russians specifically won't sell their engines to US integrators for [1] [2]), or waste $100 million more on an unnecessary Delta launch (vs Atlas). Better to ignore a minor infraction.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=russian+engines+national+sec...

[2] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-national...

Ahh, my mistake. I was unaware that the SEC does not have pull over privately held companies, or at least their employees. Still, the wave of litigation headed Musk's way can't help matters. He's going to be very busy.

> the SEC does not have pull over privately held companies

I'm not sure this is accurate. The SEC could try to bar someone from serving as CEO or a director of any corporation. It's just never attempted that. The SEC regulates everyone who touches securities, and private companies issue securities.

This ban, however, specifically restricts itself to public companies. The issue is therefore moot.

If he's banned from leading Tesla, perhaps he'll start mucking SpaceX up with his newly available attention.

I'd like to think Shotwell et. al already have a pretty well established convention as to how much Musk is allowed to intervene directly in operation and decision-making.

He can pretend that he knows better than automotive engineers but I think his self-awareness is better calibrated when it comes to rocketry.

He definitely has a lot of say when it comes to the technical details of rocket design. Mueller told the story about how on Merlin engine he insisted on utilizing fluid Dynamics to control the fuel instead of using valves, when everyone else disagreed, and the idea worked really well. And you know that there is no way Musk can fire Mueller and keep SpaceX so he doesn't need to brown nose Musk.

He can take the CEO slot anytime he wants, but he should not.