President-elect Donald Trump joined Elon Musk in south Texas on Tuesday to watch SpaceX launch a Starship rocket.
Though the launch was a success, SpaceX opted not to catch the booster with large mechanical arms as planned. The catch was aborted just four minutes into the test flight for unspecified reasons, and the booster landed in the Gulf of Mexico moments later.
The Associated Press reported that SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said the flight director did not order the booster to be returned to the launch site due to criteria for the catch not being met, though he didn’t specify what happened.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk
Musk, the leader of SpaceX, Tesla and X (formerly Twitter), endorsed Trump for president earlier this year, and his super PAC held a $1 million daily giveaway to registered voters in swing states.
Following his endorsement of the GOP presidential nominee, Musk poured millions of his own dollars into donations to pro-Trump super PACs, as well as joined the former president during campaign rallies.
Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Last week, Trump announced that his second administration will create the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Details of the new department, which Trump abbreviated as DOGE, are fairly unknown. Trump said in his statement that the department will not be a federal agency but will provide guidance “outside of government” by partnering with the White House and Office of Management and Budget “to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.”
“Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!” Musk said about DOGE in a post on X after Trump’s announcement last week. “We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining.”
SpaceX and NASA
The launch from Musk’s SpaceX was a test for a rocket that the company and NASA hopes to one day use to send astronauts to the moon and potentially to even use for travel to Mars.
SpaceX is being paid more than $4 billion by NASA to land astronauts on the moon using Starships on missions scheduled for later this decade. Meanwhile, Musk has spoken about launching Starships to Mars in order to build a sustainable city.
Since 2023, there have been six launches launch of fully assembled Starships with the first three ending in explosions.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.
