Awkward.
Swing and a Miss
On Tuesday afternoon, president-elect Donald Trump attended his new buddy SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s rocket launch, like a hands-off dad showing up at his son’s softball game.
But Musk didn’t exactly hit it out of the park this time around. Unfortunately for the tycoon, minutes after the gigantic rocket took off from SpaceX’s testing facilities in South Texas, the space company called for a “booster offshore divert” that derailed the show.
The original plan was to catch Starship’s gigantic Super Heavy booster with SpaceX’s massive, chopstick arms-wielding tower — like at Starship’s fifth test flight last month.
But this time around SpaceX called off the maneuver, sending the 233-foot stainless steel structure into the Gulf of Mexico, where it erupted in a gigantic fireball — the perfect prelude for Trump’s triumphant return to the White House.
Not a Home Run
It’s an unfortunate turn of events for Trump, who came all this way to watch his new protégé hit a home run.
“I’m heading to the Great State of Texas to watch the launch of the largest object ever to be elevated, not only to Space, but simply by lifting off the ground,” Trump gushed in a typo-riddled missive on Truth Social. “Good luck to Elon Musk and the Great Patriots involved in this incredible project!”
Other than the missed opportunity for a second catch of its booster, SpaceX did pull off an impressive Starship launch, sending the spacecraft well past the edge of space and even reigniting one of its Raptor engines once there, a critical milestone.
Even Starship’s return went relatively smoothly, with a controlled bellyflop maneuver resulting in an almost perfectly executed dip in the Indian Ocean. That’s despite SpaceX removing a whopping 2,100 heat shield tiles and greatly increasing the angle of Starship’s descent.
Take Me Out
Now that Trump and Musk are fully in their honeymoon phase, we should expect plenty more moments involving SpaceX’s massive rocket. With the president on his side, Musk could soon be dismantling pesky environmental regulations that were designed to protect the surrounding wildlife that his rockets have quite literally lit on fire.
In short, Musk’s Mars rocket playground could soon become the epicenter of the United States’ space program, a refocusing of federal funds that could leave NASA’s operations in ruins.
The mercurial CEO has made some characteristically overly ambitious predictions when it comes to his Mars rocket, promising Trump that Starship would visit the Red Planet as soon as two years from now.
But given the current state of the company’s development — despite some considerable advancements over the last six test flights alone — that’s looking less and less likely.
After all, massively missing the mark on his timelines is kind of Musk’s thing.
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